Joan Humble: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, as well as providing support for young people with substance abuse problems and mental health issues, Blackpool youth offending team is also working with Blackpool council to identify suitable accommodation for young offenders? A homeless young offender is much less likely to be rehabilitated than one with a home. Will my right hon. Friend therefore try to ensure that suitable accommodation is available?

David Hanson: I will certainly look at that. There is a wide range of learning and skills provision—including work experience, the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, and Prince's Trust and other high-intensity work—going on in those centres. In relation to Lancaster Farms, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace), we are establishing links with the Lancaster probation service and the Lancaster and Morecambe college to try to get people into employment when they leave the institution.

David Hanson: Those figures are coming down, but I accept in part what the hon. Gentleman says. There is still a high level of reoffending by young people leaving those institutions. As I have said, support is needed in learning and skills, literacy and numeracy, employment and housing, and in tackling the drug and alcohol problems that people have, and last summer we introduced the youth crime action plan to try to tackle some of those issues early on in people's criminal careers. The hon. Gentleman mentions 12 years of this Government, but the Conservatives' proposals to cut further money from this budget would be unlikely to lead to a positive improvement in the level of activity at Lancaster Farms and Hindley in the north-west.

Nicholas Winterton: May I ask the distinguished Minister, for whom I have a very high regard— [ Interruption. ] May I ask how widely schemes such as the Duke of Edinburgh awards—a fantastic scheme that does a great deal for the rehabilitation of young offenders—are available in the north-west of England, an area that includes my constituency?

David Burrowes: May I remind the Minister of another of the Government's figures, which show that three quarters of those in young offenders institutions are dependent on drugs? Last year, why is it that only 100 young offenders from Lancaster Farms YOI started drug treatment? Does the Minister agree with the chief inspector of prisons' view, published in her annual report last week, that it is remarkable that so little has been done to tackle the fourfold increase in alcohol-related problems in prisons?

David Hanson: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that this Government have increased by a massive amount the resources devoted to overcoming those problems. Obviously, there is a lot of drug-related crime, which means that individuals who enter the system need greater levels of support. In the north-west alone three drug and alcohol programmes and two offending behaviour programmes are in operation. In particular, there is the CARAT scheme, which provides counselling, assessment, referral, advice and throughcare. It deals with self-esteem, drug programmes, sexual health, the supply of drugs, healthy eating, steroid abuse, stress management and relapse prevention. All those schemes are funded by Government resources that, unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman's party has pledged to cut from our Department.

Norman Baker: It is the national security aspect that worries me. Does the Secretary of State recall the tragic events revealed by the inquest into the death of Lance Corporal Hull, who died under US friendly fire, and how the US wanted to ensure that the cockpit video of that event was restricted to the coroner only and withheld from the press and public? It was subsequently made public only on account of its being leaked to  The Sun newspaper. Does the Secretary of State agree that inquests in closed session must be absolutely the exception rather than the rule? Would he also say that embarrassment to the Government of the day or to our allies is not a sufficient reason for closed inquests?

Jack Straw: We are certainly open to examining other alternatives, as I have made clear. I think that the House now accepts that there is a problem that cannot be dealt with simply by PII certificates. I am therefore open to considering the alternatives, although I think that there are some practical problems because we are dealing with extreme circumstances in which there is a very severe risk, not of damage or embarrassment to the Government, but of an individual—a covert human intelligence source, say—being killed. That is why it has been judged that such matters should not go to the jury. In a criminal trial, even when some of it is held in camera with a jury that has effectively been vetted, the operation of PII certificates means that part of such evidence will not be disclosed to the jury.
	One way or another, we have to face up to the fact that, if we want full article 2 inquiries to take place, part of the evidence must be safely excluded from the jury. The issue is not whether that should be so but how best to do it, and of course I accept that it should be done in a way that properly commands public confidence.

Andrew MacKinlay: When he leaves the Chamber, will the Justice Secretary double-check on the reply that he gave to the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack), who is Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee? I think that he was correct to say that the Coroners and Justice Bill extends to Northern Ireland, and that is buttressed by the fact that last week we had very powerful representations by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission about the Bill, particularly in relation to legacy issues. With the greatest respect to the Justice Secretary, I think that he is wrong.

Jack Straw: I do not believe that either the de Menezes case or the Nimrod case would have been subject to the kind of process that is proposed in the Bill. Those inquests self-evidently took place satisfactorily, without the need for such a system. As I have said already, in deciding whether to seek a certificate under the Bill, a Secretary of State would have to show that no other measures would be adequate to prevent the material concerned from being made public, so I simply do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says.
	However, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that at present there are two inquests that cannot proceed because the arrangements made in the de Menezes and Nimrod cases are not regarded as satisfactory. The choice before the House is whether to have inquests—albeit conducted under the proposals in the Bill, or variations of them—or not to have inquests at all. I repeat to the House that I do not regard the proposals as copyright. We are happy to consider other alternatives, but the House has to face the fact that there needs to be additional provision that is currently not in the law, because otherwise some bereaved relatives will go without an inquest at all.

David Jones: When the scheme was announced by the Lord Chancellor's predecessor in June 2007, he described it as a temporary measure. Since then, some 47,500 prisoners have been released early, of whom more than 950 have offended while on licence; those offences include three murders and two rapes. In the circumstances, does not the Secretary of State agree that when his colleague Lord Bach said last month that
	"it is not entirely a satisfactory scheme"—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 January 2009; Vol. 706, c. 1555]
	he was guilty of the greatest understatement imaginable? Is it not, in fact, a positively dangerous scheme, and when does he propose to end it?

Dominic Grieve: Seeing that there have been three murders, two rapes and many more serious offences committed by criminals who were released early under the Government's end of custody licence scheme, will the Secretary of State tell the House what assessment he has made of the likely number of such offences that will be committed by such offenders who will be released under the scheme in 2009?

Dominic Grieve: I thank the Secretary of State for his welcome, but he cannot escape the fact that the offences, including murder, were committed by people who were released early under his scheme. That says volumes about the Government's assessment about protecting the public. Turning to the question of the future of the scheme, is it not the truth that his intention is to institutionalise, not end, early release through proposals in the Coroners and Justice Bill that will require sentencing to be conditioned by the cost of the sentence? That will make sure that in future, Government expediency is placed in front of criminal justice.

Jack Straw: The hon. and learned Gentleman has a very short memory—I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but my comments are relevant to the Conservatives' suggestion that only we have faced this problem. Other Administrations have had to resort to such measures. Some 3,000 prisoners were released just like that between July and August 1987. As for the hon. and learned Gentleman's key question, if he wishes to table amendments to the Coroners and Justice Bill, we will look forward to considering those. I have made it clear that there is no prospect whatsoever, nor is it Government policy, that at the point of sentencing, sentencers should have to take into account the resource costs of what they are proposing. That is not in the Bill, nor is it Government policy.

Bridget Prentice: I am concerned about the example that my hon. Friend gives. If he wishes to come and see me to discuss it, I will be more than happy to do so. There are, however, two things that I would say to him. There is legal representation available for mental health proceedings at the first-tier tribunal, and there is also legal aid available at the upper tribunal. As for the members of the tribunal, there are about 1,100 of them, and they are split more or less evenly across the three disciplines that they are meant to represent.

Michael Wills: May I assure the hon. Gentleman that in relation to the review, we are fully committed to making sure that local access to the coroner service is retained. If we move to larger coroner jurisdictions, that does not mean the end of part-time coroners, and it does not mean that anyone in a rural area or anyone else will be denied access to the coroner services that they receive at present.

Roger Williams: Already the office of coroner for the county of Powys has been amalgamated with that of the coroner for Bridgend and the valleys. There is a feeling in Wales and following on from the Coroners and Justice Bill, that there will be an over-centralisation of the service in Wales. Given the sensitivity that inquests often give rise to, will the Minister confirm that the issues raised by hon. Members, particularly that of rurality, will be looked into before the implementation of the Act?

Maria Eagle: As the hon. Gentleman suggests in a roundabout way, the Attorney-General has the power to refer back to the courts sentences that she believes to be overly lenient. She is considering this at present. I cannot say more to him about this particular case, although I accept what he said about its seriousness.

Fiona Mactaggart: But is not the problem for many victims of rape the fact that in the UK we still have an average conviction rate of 6 per cent. and that many victims of this heinous crime do not see their offender being brought to justice? What action are my hon. Friend's Department and other Departments taking to ensure that offenders in the crime of rape are brought to justice?

Maria Eagle: My hon. Friend is correct to suggest that the number of complaints to the police about rape that result in prosecution is quite small. However, that is often because those who have been victimised do not feel able to go through with the prosecution. The current statistics are that 37 per cent. of all cases prosecuted as rape result in a conviction for rape, that 59 per cent. of cases prosecuted as rape result in a conviction for rape or another offence, and that 97 per cent. of those so convicted have a custodial sentence imposed. This is the highest conviction rate for 10 years.
	I accept, however, that we need to do more in respect of supporting victims and those who complain of these terrible crimes through what can be the terrible ordeal of going through the criminal justice system. We have extended the support available to women—and men, of course, who can also be subjected to this terrible offence—by providing sexual assault referral centres across England and Wales, more access to support, and a better understanding among prosecutors and police about how to deal with the victims of these offences. That is showing an increase in conviction rates, as indicated in the statistics.

Tony Baldry: Last year, the Secretary of State's permanent secretary, Suma Chakrabarti, said to the Justice Committee that by December the Department would have a much better idea of what cuts it needed to make to live within its means. One assumes that that will result in some cuts in front-line services. Perhaps the Secretary of State could help the House by giving some indication of where those cuts are going to fall. Could he give me an undertaking that one of the cuts will not be the closure of the probation service office in Banbury, because that would be a very retrograde step for offender management in the north of Oxfordshire?

Jack Straw: I do not mind taking lectures from some parts of the House about our budget, but it does not lie well in the mouth of the hon. and learned Gentleman or those in his party to criticise the savings that we have to make because their only response is to say that they would cut even more. That is the straightforward reality; they would cut at least £100 million from the Ministry of Justice's budget.

Bridget Prentice: My hon. Friend has offered a helpful and constructive suggestion, and we shall certainly look at it. I have seen national advertising campaigns in London on gun and knife crime, for example, that are very effective. In my area of Lewisham, the safer neighbourhood team included information in its quarterly newsletter to residents on people who were caught and convicted, and on the resulting sentences. We should consider matters as widely as possible to ensure that everyone, victims and offenders, are aware of the real cost of crime.

Jack Straw: Yes, and I commend the hon. Lady for her work on this matter and the way in which she has drawn it to the attention of the House and myself. I recently met the Magistrates Association and the association of chairs of benches of magistrates—[Hon. Members: "Chairs of benches?"] Well, they were the chairmen of benches, some of whom were female.
	The guidance is clear, stating at paragraph 6.21, that PND disposal for shop theft
	"may not be appropriate for those who are known to be substance misusers."
	There are two issues here. The first is whether the guidance should be changed, and we do intend to change it. The second, whatever the guidance, is ensuring that the police follow it properly and that there is a proper audit of what they are doing.

Jack Straw: I am pleased to tell the House that this morning, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), announced further progress building on the implementation of the Corston report recommendations on women within the criminal justice system. Some £15.5 million of new money will be spent over two years on additional services in the community for women, with the aim of both cutting their reoffending and reducing the need to imprison women convicted of less serious offences.

Jack Straw: Let me make it clear that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), who was the Minister responsible, and I did a huge amount of work on what happened in Leeds, which was a scandal. It arose when the West Yorkshire magistrates courts committee ran the magistrates court service in Leeds; central Government had no direct responsibility whatsoever. It has fallen to us to sort out the mess that the lack of proper leadership, control and management by the magistrates courts committee and the officials in that system created. We have been trying to sort out the problem. Of course, I am happy to discuss with the hon. Gentleman any further information that should be released. I cannot comment on the disciplinary process, but the responsibility for a scandalous situation must rest where it began—in Leeds.

Jo Swinson: Recent events have shown the clear and urgent need to clean up our political system, so I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State saying that he will consider introducing measures that command widespread support. May I therefore urge him to include in the constitutional renewal Bill a provision that has widespread support and for which the House has already voted—that for an elected House of Lords?

Ben Wallace: The Justice Secretary is answerable to the House for party funding. An investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Electoral Commission has already found him to have broken his own law, and he is currently under investigation by the Electoral Commission for perhaps taking an impermissible donation. Given that he is in charge of trying to reform party donations and Parliament, would not being found guilty a second time undermine his credibility? Should he not seriously consider his position?

Jack Straw: I of course commend the new director's policy of greater openness. However, there are slightly complicated issues when it comes to having cameras in trial courts. The proceedings of the Law Lords at the point of judgment are already subject to being televised and the proceedings of the supreme court, when it starts across the road in October, will also be subject to being televised. However, the House would wish to consider long and hard before going down the route of some but not all American states and televising court proceedings. That could cause many more problems than it would seek to solve.

Laurence Robertson: In an earlier answer, to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), the Justice Secretary accepted that sometimes the sentencing guidelines were not being followed in cases of shop theft. Does he feel that they are being adequately followed for burglary? We have recently seen a rise in the number of burglaries, which is not a minor offence, but a serious one that causes a great deal of pain and disruption. Is there any more that he can do to try to reduce its incidence in that respect?

Tobias Ellwood: May I draw the Secretary of State's attention to Question 19 and ask whether he will allow Bournemouth's court cells to be used by Bournemouth's police to detain suspected offenders? The police cells and the court cells are part of the same building. More police cells are being built, but unfortunately they currently get full—for example on a Friday night—and the police have to drive those who have been arrested all the way to Weymouth. There seems to be a lot of red tape, so I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could look into that.

Jack Straw: If the hon. Gentleman looked around him, he would see that what he is proposing in an hypothesis that is unlikely to turn into a reality.

Jack Straw: I accept that a number of discrete proposals in the Bill are certainly worthy of support across the House. As the hon. Gentleman knows, however, the reason why all three parties in this House have been reluctant to support Lord Steel's Bill is the high suspicion that his real purpose was to kick any greater reform of the House of Lords into touch. Many of us think that some of his proposed changes are necessary, but that they are by no means a sufficient part of a major reform of the Lords.

Andrew Dismore: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Law of Property Act 1925 to require a mortgagee to obtain the court's permission before exercising the power of sale, where the mortgaged land consists of or includes a dwelling-house; to make certain powers available to the court in actions by mortgagees for possession of a dwelling-house; and for connected purposes.
	This Bill is about a very important human right: the right not to be thrown out of one's home without a court order. It is a right that affects millions of people, and it is of even greater importance in times of economic downturn such as these. However, it is a right that we simply do not have in this country. A recent court judgment now allows unscrupulous lenders to sell people's homes over their heads, without having first to go to court, when even just one mortgage payment has been missed.
	The number of home repossessions resulting from defaults on mortgage repayments has increased dramatically in recent months. According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, 45,000 homes were expected to have been repossessed by the end of last year, and 75,000 this year. The number of people in mortgage arrears rose to 168,000. The Financial Services Authority and the Council of Mortgage Lenders report that more than 1 million households are likely to default on a mortgage payment in the next year.
	The Government have responded to the rising tide of home repossessions with admirable speed and decisiveness. The Prime Minister told the House on 22 October that new guidance had been given to county court judges to ensure that repossession of people's and families' homes was undertaken only as a matter of last resort. About a month later, on 19 November, the new pre-action protocol on seeking possession based on mortgage arrears came into force. Its purpose is to ensure that lenders and borrowers act fairly and reasonably with each other to resolve any matter concerning mortgage arrears. The Government have also introduced support for mortgage interest through the income support system, which has been improved. There is also the mortgage rescue scheme for vulnerable people and the home owner's mortgage support scheme.
	In the meantime, however, in a case involving Horsham Properties, the High Court ruled at the beginning of October last year that lenders—banks, building societies and investment companies—were entitled to sell properties, including people's family homes, without having first to go to court for an order, following just a single default on a mortgage payment. That objective has been achieved as a consequence of the mortgage small print—according to the judge, "conveyancing shorthand"—that is in practically every mortgage deed, in combination with section 101 of the Law of Property Act 1925.
	The purchaser of the property who is the new owner—very likely another faceless, compassionless investment company—is then entitled to a summary possession order against the borrower, the householder. The householder is now considered by the law to be a trespasser in his or her own home, which they no longer own. There is no defence in law against that claim. The new pre-action protocol and all the other forms of support that I have mentioned are therefore easily circumvented by unscrupulous lenders who invoke their power to sell the property in this way, without first having to go to court.
	Both the Financial Services Authority and the Council of Mortgage Lenders have reported that UK sub-prime lenders have been taking an increasingly aggressive approach to repossessions, and predict that this trend is only likely to increase as economic conditions worsen. Hundreds of thousands of people and their families are therefore at serious risk of being thrown out of their homes, without first having had any opportunity whatever to put their point of view to a judge or to try to persuade the court that it is neither fair nor reasonable to evict them.
	My Bill will have the effect of reversing the High Court's judgment. It requires that lenders—sub-prime or otherwise—first obtain the court's permission, before they can call in their security by selling a property that is somebody's home. It will ensure that the court that hears the lender's application will have the power to delay the sale of the property and to give the borrower more time to repay, if that is appropriate in all the circumstances. It does not guarantee that people can stay in their homes indefinitely if they cannot pay the mortgage, but it does ensure that people have an opportunity to persuade an independent court that it is far too early, or disproportionate, to throw them into the street—with bags, baggage, furniture and kids' toys—at the whim of a hard-bitten property company.
	Most people might have thought they had protection against this sort of thing happening but, as a result of last October's court case, they simply do not. It is truly shocking that in Britain in 2009, such a basic legal protection for home owners is not already part of our law, especially when human rights law requires there to be such protection.
	The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in a case against the UK— McCann  v. UK—that the right to respect for one's home, guaranteed by article 8 of the European convention, includes such protection. It said:
	"The loss of one's home is a most extreme form of interference with the right to respect for the home. Any person at risk of an interference of this magnitude should in principle be able to have the proportionality of the measure determined by an independent tribunal in the light of the relevant principles under Article 8 of the Convention, notwithstanding that, under domestic law, his right of occupation has come to an end... the applicant was dispossessed of his home without any possibility to have the proportionality of the measure determined by an independent tribunal. It follows that, because of the lack of adequate procedural safeguards, there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention in the instant case."
	Article 11 of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights also protects the right to housing. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has interpreted this in its general comments to include a right to due process and appropriate procedural safeguards before being evicted from one's home.
	In our recent report on "A Bill of Rights for the UK?", the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair, recommended that one of the rights that should be protected in any UK Bill of Rights was the right to housing. We suggested in our "draft outline Bill of Rights", the inclusion of provisions to the effect that
	"everyone is entitled to be secure in the occupancy of their home"
	and
	"no one may be evicted from their home without an order of a court."
	Those provisions were modelled on the right to housing in the international covenant on economic and social rights and on the equivalent provision in the South African Bill of Rights.
	Of course, not everyone agrees with the Joint Committee that a Bill of Rights should include protection for such social and economic rights. However, if the United Kingdom had a Bill of Rights that included such provisions, our courts would not have been able to interpret the law in the way that they did in this appalling case, thus allowing lenders to cash in on their security by selling people's homes without first having to obtain a court's agreement that such a drastic step was proportionate in the circumstances. Until we have such a Bill of Rights, there is absolutely nothing to stop our courts giving the highest priority to the rights of banks over the rights of ordinary people to a fair hearing before they lose their homes.
	This example of home repossession provides a good practical example of the way in which a Bill of Rights protecting social and economic rights such as the right to housing—including the right to minimum procedural safeguards before eviction from one's home—could defend hundreds of thousands of ordinary people against more powerful interests at times of economic hardship. It shows that human rights are, and should be, universal. They are not a villains' charter; they are for the middle-class professional struggling with a mortgage just as much as for the council or private tenant with rent arrears when each falls on hard times. No one should lose his or her home without good reason, without proper and fair justification, and without an impartial court hearing.
	This problem is immediate and it is urgent. The judge in the Horsham Properties case said that it was a matter for Parliament to resolve. In the absence of the Bill of Rights that I advocated, there is no alternative but to try to change the law through this Bill, which amends the Law of Property Act 1925.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	That Mr. Andrew Dismore, Mr Virendra Sharma, Shona McIsaac, John Austin, Mike Gapes, Ms Karen Buck, Siobhain McDonagh, Judy Mallaber, Rob Marris, Mr. Chris Mullin and Dr. Evan Harris present the Bill.
	Mr. Andrew Dismore accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 26 June, and to be printed (Bill 52).

David Willetts: I beg to move,
	That this House regrets that the number of young people not in education, employment or training in England has grown from 686,000 to 850,000 since 2000, that the number of adult learner places has fallen by 1.3 million in just two years, and that the number of UK students enrolled at university is now falling; notes that current policies are hindering training opportunities by cutting support for second-chance students, placing too much emphasis on paper-based qualifications rather than raising skills, imposing too many bureaucratic obstacles on employers wishing to offer apprenticeships and freezing the further education capital spending programme despite the Prime Minister's commitment to bring forward capital projects; believes that providing improved opportunities to up-skill and re-skill is more important than ever given the challenges posed by the recession; and calls on the Government to boost the number of apprenticeships, provide more support to young people not in employment, education or training, help small and medium-sized employers access training, improve opportunities for adult learners, and introduce an all-age careers service.
	These are tough times. Our challenge is, of course, to emerge from this recession with a better-balanced and stronger economy, which means an economy that has invested properly in skills. In order to assess the challenges that we face, we should review the record of the past 10 years to see how we managed to prepare ourselves for the tough years ahead during the boom years which are now dismissed as the age of irresponsibility. Those were the years when employment was rising but the number of young people not in education, employment or training, or NEETs, also rose, from 660,000 in 1997 to 780,000 10 years later, an increase of 18 per cent.
	That is what we were doing in the good times. We also know what we were doing in comparison with other advanced western countries. A valuable report from the OECD entitled "Jobs for Youth" records our performance during the growth years compared with the performances of those other countries. Again, the story is very clear. While our rate for NEETs was getting worse and worse, the rate across the OECD on the very same measure was improving. Having been better than the OECD average at the start of Labour's time in office, after 10 years our rate was below that average.
	The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds rose in Britain from 13.4 per cent. in 1997 to 14.4 per cent. in 2007. In other words, youth unemployment was higher by the end of the boom years. By contrast, across the OECD as a whole the average youth unemployment rate fell from 15.6 to 13.4 per cent. In other words, we entered the boom years with a youth unemployment performance that was better than the OECD average, and we now enter the recession with a performance that is worse.

David Burrowes: On 12 February, the Secretary of State will have an opportunity to visit Southgate college and there to hear of the plans for an £80 million development that would transform the college and make it a community hub. Sadly, however, the rug has been pulled out from under its feet, because the capital approval has been withdrawn. That is the reality of the future facing what the Prime Minister said would be world-class accommodation.

David Willetts: My hon. Friend is fighting a very important battle for common-sense English. I shall take careful account of the point he makes, and we shall try to do better.
	One of the reasons why we face the problems that I am discussing is the policy mistakes made by this Government. One of those mistakes is, of course, the endless reorganisation of the world of skills. I am not going to give the House another potted history of the Government's measures —[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), says that he is relieved, but we are talking about his Government's measures: the abolition of the training and enterprise councils, at a cost of 62 million; the abolition of the Further Education Funding Council for England; and the creation of the Learning and Skills Council and its 47 different local LSC branches. They had to be abolished so that instead there could be nine regional centres and, of course, the LSC itself is to be abolished and replaced by three new bodies.
	In 10 years, we have seen a classic example of Labour's hyperactivity in its endlessly abolishing and reorganising things. The end result was very well put in the recent Simplification of Skills in England report, in a section entitled Rapidity of change, which stated that
	the rate of changes in programmes, initiatives, organisations and procedures adds a further dimension of confusion for employers, who can find it extremely difficult to keep up with change and even become aware of new developments, let alone understand them.
	One of the problems is the endless process of change and confusion, which means that it is very hard for individual employers, and for individual young people who are trying to increase their skills, to find their way through the system.
	Another problem has been the failure to reform our schools. As well as that schools failure, there is a skills failure: the failure to establish an effective skills policy that understands the difference between skills and qualifications. The Government have become obsessed with paying FE colleges to churn out paper qualifications, even if they are not valued by employers and even if they are not what young people or learners of all ages need. There is more to life, and indeed to education and skills training, than simply building up paper qualifications. It is because of the Government's obsession with paper qualifications that so many people have lost out.
	Adult learners have lost out, so I commend the excellent early-day motion signed by Members from all parts of the House on behalf of the Alliance for Lifelong Learning. Some hon. Members who are present have subscribed to the
	concern that over 1.4 million
	adult learner
	places have been lost in the last two years.
	We thought that the Labour party believed in adult learning; we thought that was one of the commitments and beliefs in the history of the Labour party. It is shocking to see this Government presiding over such a big decline in opportunities for adult learning across the country. The Government say that we do not need to worry because these are places for people to do basket weaving and belly dancing. Conservatives understand the value of those things

Mark Lancaster: While the number of places has undoubtedly fallen, may I commend the proactive work of the Open university, which has recently introduced the Re-launch website which acts as a search engine to find both places and potential sources of finance?

David Willetts: If I may say so, the anxiety is not created by us. There is real anxiety among people on the governing bodies of FE colleges and the principals of FE colleges who are approaching us and asking us to raise on their behalf a statement from the Government about what they are doing. Perhaps it was my eternal optimism, but I thought the Chancellor meant something when he said in his pre-Budget statement last November:
	I can announce today that 3 billion of capital spending will be brought forward from 2010-11 to this year and next.[ Official Report, 24 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 495.]
	I thought the Prime Minister meant it when he said in a speech on 5 January that
	we have...taken...tough decisions that will also benefit every region and nation of the UK to bring forward our capital spending programmes.
	If the Government are bringing forward capital spending, why is capital spending being delayed in the FE college sector?
	The Secretary of State said in answer to questions on the subject last week that we should not worry because it was all in the pipeline. His pipeline is about as reliable as the one bringing gas to the Ukraine. His pipeline is not delivering the capital projects that Conservative Members are fighting for on behalf of our FE colleges. If it is all so fine, why has the Secretary of State asked Sir Andrew Foster to review the matter? What is the purpose of calling for yet another review if it is not a recognition that there is a problem? We want to know how many capital projects proposed by FE colleges are affected, the size of the funds involved, and when the Department first knew about the problem.
	Another matter I want to refer to is the crisis involving wildcat action by workers in various parts of the country, which has been caused by their concern about what they believe to be the threat to their jobs from foreign workers. Clearly, we have to be very careful in how we approach this, as no hon. Member on either side of the House would have any truck with xenophobia. We believe in the free movement of goods, services and people around the EU, but perhaps the Secretary of State will illuminate the rather striking gap between what the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory reform have said about the action. The Secretary of State for Health said:
	If workers are being brought across here on worse terms and conditions to actually get jobs in front of British workers...that would be wrong and I can understand the anger about that.
	However, the Business Secretary said in another place the following day that there was no problem with the EU rules on the free movement of labour. He said:
	The statement issued by Total last night confirmed that workers from overseas are paid at the same rate as other workers on the site.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 February 2009; Vol. 707, c. 473.]
	Being very generous-spirited, I shall take at face value the words of Lord Mandelsonand it is a long time since anyone has done thatabout what he had discovered and the confirmation from Total. If all that is so, however, what is the competitive advantage of the workers being brought in from abroad over the workers we have seen demonstrating and asking for their jobs? That is the crucial question, and the crucial clue is surely in what the Prime Minister said when trying to explain the slogantaken from the British National partythat passed his lips about British jobs for British workers.
	On The Politics Show of 1 February, the Prime Minister said:
	When I talked about British jobs, I was talking about giving people in Britain the skills, so that they have the ability to get jobs which were at present going to people from abroad.
	That was the Prime Minister's attempt to explain his egregious remark. If we take him at face value, the only explanation left for the failure of the workers we see protesting to get the jobs they hope to secure is the failure of his Government's policies on skills. That is the only explanation left if we accept what the Business Secretary said and what the Prime Minister has offered as the meaning of his remarks. He meant that he was going to raise the skills of British workers so that they could secure those jobs, and they are protesting because they cannot get them.

John Denham: My hon. Friend is right on both points. It is indicative that the hon. Member for Havant was unable to recognise one of the biggest success stories of recent yearsthat by providing modest financial support for people at work to encourage their friends to get involved in learning, we have reached many thousands upon thousands of peopleabout 250,000 every yearwho would not otherwise have gone into learning. And they often volunteer for learning in basic numeracy and literacy, two areas where people find it most difficult to say, I've got a problem and I want some assistance. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
	I shall set out the huge gulf between the Opposition and the Government in respect of skills. We believe that in a downturn we need to invest in skills and training. The Opposition want to cut investment in skills and training. It is not acceptable for the leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), to announce that if his party was in power, from 1 April 2009 it would cut billions of pounds from public expenditure, and to name the Departments that would be protected and those, including this area of work, that would not be protected, and then for the hon. Member for Havant to turn round and say that there would be no cuts in any of these areas of spending. It is not credible or believable, and until I get a different answer, I will proceed by analysing the share of cuts that would fall to this Department and telling the House exactly what those Conservative cuts would mean for education and training.

John Denham: I shall make a little progress and then come back to my hon. Friend.
	We believe that, in addition to support for investment in skills and training, there should be an increase in support for those who lose their jobs. The Conservative party opposed the measures needed to pay for that. It would do what it did beforethat is, nothing. We should work with Britain's businesses to deliver the training that they say they want. That would give people the chance to gain the skills that they need. As we have just said, the Conservative party would take that chance away from 1 million people and thousands of firms.
	In these difficult economic times the Government have three priorities: first, delivering global action to tackle a global downturn; secondly, delivering real help now to families and businesses to help them through the challenges of the here and now; and thirdly, delivering real hope for the future by stepping up investment in our infrastructure, industries and skills.
	Let us start with investment. When the Conservative party left officeat the time when the current, recycled, shadow shadow Chancellor was Chancellor of the Exchequerthe budget for further education colleges was zero. At the time, the National Audit Office described FE colleges as
	ageing and their quality and fitness for purpose was often unsatisfactory, affecting the reputation of the sector.
	Colleges were not fit for purpose. Since 1997 the Government have invested more than 2 billion in renewing and modernising FE facilities, and we will spend another 2.3 billion in the current spending review period. Since the programme began, nearly 700 projects in 330 colleges have been agreed.

John Denham: As I understand it, no college plan has been presented to the LSC in the hon. Gentleman's constituency for approval, even in principle. It may well be that his local college has aspirations and hopes to move forward, as many others do and rightly should, but it does not do this debate much good to claim that colleges were on the verge of final approval when they are clearly some way further down the line in terms of planning procedures. I will be happy to discuss the situation at the college when I visit it in a few days' or a few weeks' time.
	As I was saying, since the programme began nearly 700 projects in 330 colleges have been agreed. At present, 253 schemes are under way or fully approved. Only 42 colleges in the whole of England have yet to receive any investment. Last summer, the National Audit Office reported the programme as making good progress with the renewal and modernisation of the FE estate. It found that the great majority of projects had come in on budget and delivered great improvements for learners, and said:
	The capital programme for further education is enabling colleges and the Learning and Skills Council to achieve together what neither could have achieved on their own, and is delivering high quality buildings.

Denis MacShane: My constituency, Rotherham, has been hard hit, with job cuts at Corus and Burberry shutting down. Three weeks ago, the  Rotherham Advertiser filled two pages with the new plans for the new development at Rotherham college of arts and technology, which had been signed off. I was concerned about that being displayed, given the misleading guidance to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) has just referred. I am meeting George Trow, the college principal, on Friday. Could the Secretary of State's private office write to me before then with the assurance that he has now given at the Dispatch Box, with reference to Rotherham college of arts and technology? I would be most grateful.

John Denham: The remarks that I made apply to colleges that have received full approval in detail to proceed. I am happy to write to my right hon. Friend ahead of his meeting.
	Having set out the success of the programme and made it clear that it is my intention to ensure that every pound that we have promised to spend will be spent and that the capital programme has not been suspended, let me turn to an issue that is of genuine concern to Members on both sides of the House. There are schemes in the pipeline that have not yet been fully approved, and the LSC has put further approvals on hold until it has assessed the whole programme. The LSC has not yet provided a full analysis of all those schemes, but I need to be frank: many more schemes are currently in preparation than can be funded in this spending round. Some colleges that have anticipated early approval will be disappointed. Priorities will have to be set and hard decisions will have to be taken.
	It is clear that in some cases, unrealistic expectations have been allowed to develop or have been encouraged, which is unacceptable. The LSC is, by statute, responsible for the management of the capital programme, but as Secretary of State, I will apologise to any colleges that find themselves in the position we have discussed, and as Secretary of State, I need to find out how that situation arose and what lessons must be learned for the future. That is why I have agreed with the Learning and Skills Council that Sir Andrew Foster should carry out an independent review of the LSC's handling of the programme. I hope that I have outlined the current position to the House as much as I can, and I undertake to bring forward more detailed information when it becomes available and when I am able to do so.

John Denham: That is a slightly complicated question, which I may need to reflect on when I have a look at  Hansard. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the change that we have made to ELQ funding, to create new opportunities for those who have never been able to go to university, was the right decision. Further measures have been taken to ensure that there are higher education courses to enable people with higher-level skills to reskillI can say that word, as the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) is no longer in his placeand gain new skills. That is the right approach to meeting the labour market's need for people to retrain for a new career or a new direction.
	The hon. Member for Havant mentioned apprenticeships. This Government have rescued apprenticeships from their collapse under the Conservatives and built them up so that they are well on their way to taking their rightful place as a mainstream option for young people. He could not match the extra 140 million that we are investing to provide 35,000 extra places this year. We want more than 250,000 apprenticeships next year, just when young people, and business, need that boost. The new national apprenticeship service will enable us to meet our ambition that one in five young people will take up an apprenticeship in the next decade, and to extend group training associations and support the extension of existing schemes. We expect the public sector to shoulder its share of responsibility.

John Denham: I have taken many interventions and I need to make some progress. I shall take more interventions if I can.
	Even if the Conservative party stopped all apprenticeships for those over 19 next year, they would have to make further cuts of 400 million in education and training. We continue to expand higher education; Conservative Members could not.
	More than 330,000 people learned new skills through Train to Gain last year, and more than 100,000 employers have engaged with the programme. By 2010-11, the programme will train 1 million a year. Train to Gain means training when and where employers want it, and it works for businesses and individuals. Forty-three per cent. of Train to Gain learners reported that they earned better pay, and 30 per cent. gained a promotion as a result of their training. Fifty-one per cent. of businesses reported an increase in staff productivity and 64 per cent. said that it improved their long-term competitiveness. The deputy director of the CBI recently said that Train to Gain is exactly the product we need at this time.
	Yet the hon. Member for Havant and the Conservative party have repeatedly called for the abolition of Train to Gain. That means denying 1 million people and thousands of firms the chance to get on or use training to come through difficult times. Train to Gain lets us offer small businesses flexible trainingshort courses, which have an immediate impact on productivity. It has enabled us to work with companies such as Nissan, JCB and others to train workers who face short-time working. The Conservatives would stop that.
	In the past two years, more than 1 million adults have gained their first literacy or numeracy qualification. Last year, almost 300,000 people got a level 2 qualification and 130,000 got a level 3 qualificationhuge increases compared with five years ago. Those record improvements transform people's lives and make a genuine difference. What would the hon. Member for Havant do? He believes that we should turn back the clock, end the courses and revert to subsidising Spanish courses for holidays.
	Training will help companies through the downturn, but it cannot prevent every job loss. In the last recession, people who lost their jobs were abandoned without help or hope. Many drifted or were dumped on to incapacity benefit. Some never worked again. We will not turn our backs on those who lose their jobs. We have provided 158 million in new support to colleges, third sector organisations and Jobcentre Plus to help people get the skills they need to keep their job or find a new one quickly. We are challenging the whole education and training system to change the way in which it works, and to respond better to individuals and businesses. An extra 75,000 college places will be there for those who are out of work for more than six months. People will not have to choose between learning and earning; as they get into work, their training will continue.
	At every level of education and training, people may want to reskill or retrain. We have supported and encouraged the Higher Education Funding Councils, with 50 million match funding to help universities and support individuals and businesses now. A few moments ago, the hon. Member for Havant complained that he had read about that in  The Daily Telegraph . Now the scheme is a reality, but he has not even congratulated us on it. That funding is possible because of the VAT cut, which the Conservative party also opposes.
	We are trebling professional and career development loans, allowing for 45,000 new chances to gain skills and qualifications. We are planning for the future. We are establishing the skills funding agency to ensure that we can develop the skills that we need in the strategic parts of the economy, which will enable us to prosper when the upturn comes.
	I welcome the fact that we are having this debatea debate that the Government themselves intended to hold. I hope that I have explained why we wanted it. The Conservative party has a bad history, a wrong analysis of the problems, the wrong policiesand does not even have the courage to come to the House and explain how the cuts that its party leader has promised would affect this area of activity. Everybody will learn lessons from that.

Stephen Williams: The Secretary of State mentioned previous recessions. I have bitter memories of two recessionsone when I was in school and the other when I had just started work.
	In the early 1980s, when I was in secondary school, my community in south Wales was devastated. Hundreds of people in one village could be thrown out of work in one day, sometimes as a result of the deliberate policy of the Government of that time. Shops were boarded up and people were in despair. Indeed, some people of my father's era faced unemployment and insecurity for an entire generation.
	I also remember being a young graduate trainee in 1990 in what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers, when the three people who sat near memy manager and two supervisorsgot a telephone call, reported to the fourth floor and were made redundant. They were then marched on to the pavement and I was told to clear their desks.
	I have bitter memories of previous recessions, but many young people today simply have no idea what a recession is, because for the past 15 or 20 years they have grown up in an environment of increasing prosperity, rising house prices and a credit bubblethat is, in an age of consumerism. Now they suddenly find that that certaintyindeed, that bubblehas been pricked.
	In a few months' time, one third of a million undergraduates will be leaving university and, for perhaps the first time in a generation, they will not really know what the future holds for them. When I graduated 20 years ago, the pattern was the same as it is at present. Traditionally, the largest employers of graduates were in financial services, banking, the City and the professional services that support those occupations. However, the sector is facing its worst recession in a generation, so young people leaving university will be uncertain and worried about their future.
	Those who are yet to decide what to do beyond schoolto go into further or higher educationmust be wondering whether it is worth making that investment, which now comes with increased personal debt, or whether they would be better off taking their chances in the workplace. Those already in the workplace knew that the dynamic 21st-century economy meant that they would probably have to train and retrain throughout their working lives. However, in a downturn or recession, they will have to rethink and to retrain all over again.
	It must be something of a record in a debate on skillsI have had to do several in the three and a half years that I have been a Member of Parliamentthat neither the Conservative spokesman nor the Secretary of State have mentioned the Leitch report, which was meant to be the foundation of the Government's skills strategy, taking us up to the 2020 economy. Perhaps that is because, two years on from Leitch, the Secretary of State and the Government realise that many of the recommendations and conclusions of that report are already effectively redundant, because the economy has changed. Many of the criticisms made of the report from the Liberal Democrat Benches in 2006 and 2007 are perhaps more apt now. In particular, employer-led demand does not seem so relevant when many people no longer have an employer.
	Those who are unemployed or who fear unemployment will not be interested in arbitrary targets for qualifications. They need practical help now. We need a skills strategy, not a target for qualifications. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) may no longer be in his place, but I am afraid that we do need reskilling, which is ever more relevant, and not just the upskilling that seemed to be the foundation of the Government's strategy just two years ago.
	Some of the targets in the Leitch report, which are still embedded in Government policy, such as the attainment of a full level 2 qualification, as well as the funding linked to those targets, are perhaps not relevant to the many people who are having to refocus their lives and their priorities. For older workers in particular who may need to retrain to get a specific new skill, attaining a broad level 2 qualification, which is the Government's main target, is not necessarily appropriate.

Stephen Williams: I was listening. I listened carefully to the pre-Budget report statement, to what the Secretary of State said during DIUS questions last week, and to what he said today. The fact remains that the Government must organise a review of capital expenditure that should have been under their own control, especially given that they made good-news announcements and attempted to secure publicity for them just a few months ago.

Stephen Williams: I think I have been generous in allowing interventions. I say to the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) that if he represented a university city and tried that argument with tens of thousands of students, he would not get a very good reception.
	If higher education is to expand in the future, it will need to be more flexible, particularly as we have a fast-changing economy. We need to have more people learning part-time, building up their degrees on a credit or modular basis. Therefore, we need to treat those who choose to study on a part-time basis more equitably than at present.
	As the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) also said of the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats take the position that the 100 million reallocationor cutfrom the equivalent or lower qualifications budget that was directed by the Secretary of State to the Higher Education Funding Council was a mistake. We said that at the time, and it is even more of a mistake now, when people would benefit from taking on new qualifications. It would be interesting to hear in the ministerial summing up what has actually happened to that 100 million that was supposedly refocused. The justification given for that cut in ELQs was that the 100 million was to be refocused on setting up new places in higher education, but all we have heard recently is either that applications have stalled or that the Government are warning the sector not to expect any growth in funded places in future.
	The hon. Member for Havant referred to NEETsthose not in any formal mode of education, whether FE, higher education or apprenticeships. The Government's big idea for dealing with them in the Education and Skills Bill of last year was to raise the education and training age to 18. My party resisted that position at the time. The Secretary of State has been rather cagey in some of his statements to the press about this, but I hope the Government will not be tempted to bring forward the raising of the leaving age in order to mask worsening youth unemployment.
	My final substantial point is on the need for independent advice and guidance, not only for those not in education or training, but for 13 and 14-year-olds, who are entering a completely different landscape of educational provision, whether they go down the traditional academic path of GCSEs and what comes after that, or take up the new diplomas or young people's apprenticeships. It is vital that that advice is independent of the educational setting in which they find themselves at 13 or 14. It should also be aspirational, particularly for children educated in poorer backgrounds, or those educated in more affluent backgrounds who come from a poorer family. They should challenge the stereotypes, whether based on gender or other grounds, that they might otherwise face, in order for them to be prepared for an increasingly uncertain future.
	Such new skills and training should prepare young people for the emergent economy as well as for the current economic emergency. Whether the UK's future lies in life sciences, digital media or, to use the jargon term, green-collared jobs, it is important that people are prepared for them, and have appropriate advice on the pathways open to them.

Tony Baldry: I hope that the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) will forgive me if I do not follow his specific comments, but the whole House will understand his concerns.
	Last Friday we saw in Banbury the launch of a job club, which involved pretty much every organisation locallyJobcentre Plus, the LSC, Business Link, Oxfordshire county council, Oxfordshire Economic Partnership, Cherwell district council, the Shaw Trust, RESTORE and others. On the official statistics, the Banbury travel-to-work area has an unemployment rate of about 1 per cent., but nearly 300 jobseekers turned up on Friday to take part and get involved in that job club. That indicates the scale and the depth of the present recession. What is happening in the labour market is very serious indeed.
	The people there had different needs. Some needed to maintain their skills, but one thing that struck me was that quite a lot of those people were the hidden unemployed. They are technically self-employed subcontractors, but they have been working for one or two contractors or companies. They have effectively lost their work but they do not get income-related jobseeker's allowance and so maintaining their skills and qualifications is quite difficult. For example, HGV drivers need to do more than just maintain their HGV licence. How are they going to do that?
	People need to adapt their skills, too. For example, Prodrive in Banbury will make just short of 200 people redundant this year, simply because Subaru has pulled out of Formula 1 racing. Prodrive is probably an excellent employer and those who it is reluctantly having to make redundant are highly skilled automotive engineers. How do they adapt their skills in a marketplace where other automotive engineering jobs are going, such as those at Aston Martin and along the whole corridor from Cowley to Longbridge? They need to be able to adapt those skills.
	Lastly, there are people who need to acquire completely new skills. In an area such as mine, where do they go to do that? The answer is, surely, the local FE college. I am trying to understand how my constituents who turned up last week to the Banbury job club, which will run every Fridayin my patch, we are going to ensure that so far as is possible nobody gets left behind in this recessioncan acquire those skills.
	One difficulty at the local college, as I understand it, is that unless an adult signs up to a whole NVQ they cannot get funding. Many people do not necessarily need to sign up for a whole NVQ or cannot do a whole NVQ in one go. They just want to take a unit of the qualification. I do not see why the Learning and Skills Council funds adults only if they are going to do an NVQ level 2 or 3, because many of my constituents want to adapt and acquire skills on a piece by piece basis.
	In a written answer last week, the Under-Secretary of State very kindly answered a question that I tabled, which asked
	what work his Department is undertaking with the further education sector to provide training or retraining for those who become unemployed.
	He said that the Department was providing
	158 million to support those looking for work.
	Perhaps we could have a breakdown of how that 158 million will be used. To what extent will my constituents who have become unemployed be able to access it to acquire further skills at the local FE college? The Minister also said that there would be
	350 million improved flexibilities in Train to Gain for bite-sized courses for SMEs .[ Official Report, 29 January 2009; Vol. 487, c. 788W.]
	That is absolutely fine, except for the fact that if small and medium-sized enterprises are laying people off, it does not necessarily help those who become unemployed to acquire new skills.
	In my patch, and I am sure in other hon. Members' constituencies, we experience a dysfunction in that quite a number of people are being made redundant in retail, yet in every single nursing home I am told that it is very difficult to recruit nursing staff. The homes have been relying for a very long time on nursing staff from countries outside the European Union area, such as the Philippines. How will we ensure that we can train people to work in those areas of the economy where there are vacancies as speedily as possible? How do we share information about skills needs? I am told that my local regional development agency, the South East England Development AgencySEEDAis doing research on skills needs in the area. However, it seems to be very patchy and to be quite slow in coming through.
	We need a speedier analysis of where the skilled vacancies are arising in the local economy and of how we match job vacancies much more quickly to those who become unemployed. For a long time, JobCentre Plus has been concerned primarily with getting people onto jobseeker's allowance. It has rather relied on local recruitment agencies to get people into work, but they tend to know only about jobs that are immediately available in the local labour market. However, if 200 automotive engineers are made redundant in an area where lots of other automotive engineers are also being made redundant, the local recruitment agencies will not know about other vacancies in engineering elsewhere in the country. We are going to have to get a lot smarter about how we ensure that the vacancies that exist in the economy get promoted, promulgated and filled much more quickly.
	I have been in this House for 26 years and I still think that I am pretty much of a novice in these matters. I find it pretty difficult to get to grips with the Learning and Skills Council. I think that I have a pretty good grip of my constituency, but tracking down who is running the local LSC is pretty tough. Moreover, as soon as I get to understand a bodythe Manpower Services Commission, then the area manpower boards, then the training and enterprise councils and now the LSCsit goes. I am at a complete loss to understand why that happens.
	Moreover, I believe that the present arrangements will end in 2010 and that we will then have to get to grips with three new bodies. One, funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, will be for young people; another, funded by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, will be for adults, and the third will be a national apprenticeship body funded by a different group. How on earth are college and FE principals meant to get to grips with those three organisations? We are in an economic crisis and loads of people right across the piece are losing their jobs and needing help, so why on earth are the LSCs being scrapped now? Let us at least have a degree of stability.

Ian Taylor: I shall try to reskill myself and be brief. Perhaps the House should take part in such a programme, as many of the arguments have been made in various ways from those on the Front Benches.
	I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) who has done an amazing amount of work on skills. I especially appreciate that because I chaired the Conservative party's policy review on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and we have worked in harmony. I mention mathematics not least out of disappointment: I do not know what Carol Vorderman has that I have not got, but the party appears to have preferred her to be the mathematics tsar, rather than me. Nevertheless, I shall thoroughly enjoy working with her.
	Too much of the debate, if I may say so, has been about infrastructure, buildings and the cost of buildings, rather than what goes on inside them, which is important to young people and to older people who wish to reskill themselves. As a sort of Foster review of expenditure on facilities is under way, I hope that it will take into account the opportunities that a recession gives for renegotiating construction contracts to get better value for money so that it can go further.
	Secondly, and I feel passionate about this, I hope that in any re-evaluated scheme more effort can be put into providing laboratories for science experiments. Too often, schools do not have those facilities, and that is one of the reasons why science is less exciting to young people in our schools than it should be.
	That brings me to the key point. We are in a recession and it will last for time enough in any young person's life. We need to make even more effort to ensure that young people get the opportunity to learn things that will be useful to them in the broadest sense and that they understand what skills they need if they are to be employable. For example, it is perverse that in this country the number of young people who have applied for university degrees in IT subjects has been declining just when demand for those skills has been rising. Indeed, if one listens to the experts, it seems that during this recession demand for IT skills will be at least stable if not increasing. Why is that happening?
	Why do we still struggle to get enough young people to learn physics and chemistry, despite the wonderful efforts of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry to encourage the training of teachers or at least to provide the opportunities for their retraining? Our universities have had a real problem not only in getting people to study the sciences but in ensuring that people are retained in teaching. One of the big efforts that I hope the Government will make is to use the recession as an opportunity to capture at least those who are now studying sciences at university and get them to go into teaching.
	Interestingly, the recession in the finance industry is at least an opportunity for the Government. In 2002, 6 per cent. of physics graduates entered the world of finance; by 2007, that had risen to 19 per cent. Efforts are already being made to encourage graduates to go into teaching, but if our schoolchildren are to get science opportunities at school, it is essential that they get them from people who have done the relevant science at university. In many schools, I am afraid, biology teachers, who are regarded as having done science, teach physics and chemistry as well; they often mug it up the night before. I am not being disrespectful to themand the children are lucky to have biology teachersbut I have talked to such teachers in my constituency and I realise their struggle to keep up. It is therefore hardly surprising that young people are not as inspired as we try to get them to be by the wonders and problem solving that physics and chemistry can lead to.
	This country has produced remarkable engineers, who should be an inspiration to young people. However, it is no good their being inspirational if there are no teachers to teach the subject. I ask the Secretary of State to make more effort, please, to make sure that young people are inspired to do those important things.
	Finally, there is a lot of talk about big areas of effort that we should make in this country. Often, however, they are not related to jobs likely to be on offerat least, not in the same numbersto British people. For example, I hear an awful lot about green technologies. I am all in favour of them; they are one of the areas of science and engineering that we need to stimulate. However, in terms of our skills, they do not exist in this country. Many of the windmills and wind turbines that we might be able to bring forward from research into practical application are going to be made abroad.
	Furthermore, the Government have rightly encouraged the nuclear industry to bring forward plans, and by 2020 I hope that the next generation of nuclear technology will come into application. However, the skill sets are just not there. In a recession, in particular, we need to do a series of things: first, train people with the basic skills that they require; and secondly, ensure that there is a match between the skill sets that they might think they want and the demand the Government are producing. If we are saying that there will be a nuclear industry reborn by 2020, then let us ensure that we are encouraging schools and universities to run courses for nuclear physicists and engineers.
	This is a very important debate that is well stimulated by my Front-Bench colleagues on an Opposition day. I hope that the Government draw lessons from it instead of just getting into competitive debating about the amount of money that might be spent. Money is important, but what goes on in the institutions is even more important.

Tom Levitt: I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, as other people wish to speak.
	The staying-on rate in our schools has improved, but it is not as good as it should be. However, the decision to raise from 16 to 18 the age at which one can leave formal education for good is a real investment in the future. It ensures that every 16-year-old who does not want to stay on at school will still have a placefull-time or part-time, in college or as a day-release student, or in some other combination of training and workthat ensures that the skills habit becomes part of their working lives. The first children to whom that will apply started their secondary school careers last September.
	Good employers have always valued skills and training. Learndirect and union learning representatives contribute, too. I am delighted that as a result of these measures an increasing number of good employers are out there. How do I know that? Because of the genuine success that Train to Gain is having, even at this difficult time for industry and the economy. Tens of thousands of employers and hundreds of thousands of employees have already been in touch with the Learning and Skills Council and met their skills brokerspeople whose job it is to match the right employee with the right training.
	I attended a conference in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire last Friday and the enthusiasm and interest that employers from throughout the east Midlands showed there was incredibleit was wonderful to behold. Employers know that invest to save makes sense, and that investing in skills now to get on in the future is a good way of investing their money.
	At the same time, this Government have trebled the number of apprenticeships to nearly a quarter of a million, with more to come. Ten years ago, apprenticeships were regarded as a thing of the past, but I am delighted that Tarmac will create dozens of apprenticeships in my constituency this year through its cement-making operation, despite the problems that the construction industry currently has. There are still goods and materials that need to be created for others to userecession or no recession. The manufacture of such materials will require different skills from those that their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago required.
	Companies know that they can bring skills into their industry by looking to the international market and buying them in, but that is not the sustainable way of doing things. Tarmac has recognised something of the philosophy of the JesuitsGive me an apprentice when they are young and I will create the skilled craftsman and woman of the future. This is an example of invest to saveinvesting to make profits in the future, and investing in the quality of the work forceand it is an example of why the current debate about foreign workers is so wrong. We have created 2 million British jobs, which were all available to British workers, and many of them have been taken up by British workers. We have never had more British people in work than we did in 2008, and there are hundreds of thousands of British workers working elsewhere in the European Union, with the same basic rights and protection that they would have here. There are 400,000 vacancies in the British economy, and we want to create more. Jobs need doing in the caring professions, as we have heard, in manufacturing for export and in green technology. If we are serious about giving British workers the skills to compete with the best in the world, British jobs for British workers is a legitimate aim. I stress, as my noble Friend Lord Campbell-Savours did in another place yesterday, that British jobs for British workers is not the same thing as British workers for British jobs.
	In the east midlands, our economy has been hit by the downturn in the motor trade, and companies in my constituency that are involved in the supply of parts for the motor trade have been affected, such as Federal-Mogul, which makes brake linings, and Otter Controls, which makes thermostats. Just down the road, near Derby, we have the European training centre for Toyota, one of the world's largest companies. It is the largest producer of cars in the world, and last week it announced record losses on its balance sheets, but it is not a company planning to economise on skills. It knows that to compete at the cutting edge of international trade, it needs an ever-changing mix of the right high-calibre skills. It is willing to invest when times are lean in order to make the good times happen sooner, and better, than they would otherwise.
	As for further and higher education, the university of Derby has a campus in my constituency, and a couple of years before it moved to that campus, it merged with High Peak college in Buxton. The principal reason for that was that the high-quality vocational qualifications provided by the college in fields such as catering, tourism and hospitality could not attract an international market because the college did not have university status. Those institutions were put together and the merger worked. The university upholds the principle of excellence for all; I am proud that it is in High Peak, bringing young blood into our communities, and providing opportunities for people with learning disabilities and other disabilities.
	One of the roles of jobcentres is to talk to workers facing redundancy not just about counselling and benefits, but about the training that might be available and job opportunities, too. Those workers need to ask themselves what skills they will need to get back into the work force as soon as possible if they are made redundant, bearing in mind that there are 400,000 vacancies in our economy. Where can they get the skills that they need, and who will pay for the courses? Jobcentres are on hand to provide that information, and to work with skills brokers to provide a comprehensive system of support.
	A weakness in the system is that some employers are actually refusing the support and help that is available, and are not allowing jobcentre staff to come on to their premises to talk to workers who are facing redundancy. To get out of this recession with as few wounds as possible, we need to have all sides working together. I urge companies considering redundancies to make sure that their people have access to advice and the opportunity to gain the skills that they need at this difficult time. I ask my friends in the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that these partnerships happen. People facing redundancy have a right to support, and their soon-to-be-former employers have no right to deny it to them.
	We are pulling together with schools, colleges, universities, trade unions and increasing numbers of employers, who all recognise the need for developing skills. Together with the Government, they are committed to making sure that skills are generated for the economy of the future and the fulfilment and happiness of our people.

Phil Willis: Before I came to the House I spent 34 years in teaching, and most of that time was spent in depressed areas of Leeds, the north-east and Middlesbrough. For the last 20 years of that time, I was the head teacher of two very large comprehensives, and the great tragedy of my life in teaching is that when I finished, the same sort of students were failing in our school system as when I started. Successive Governments have failed to achieve the effective training of young people, not only for the economy of tomorrow but for the life of tomorrow.
	Despite the depressing start to the debate made by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), I would like to put on record the fact that the Government have, during the past 10 years, placed a real emphasis on the skills agenda. They have set up a national skills taskforce, and asked Lord Leitch to complete his seminal report, which analysed the skills of the nation. They have brought all the major parties together to agree that skills are highly important. We might disagree about how we implement the policy, but that agreement has been achieved. It is rather sad to see that that consensus appears to be on the wane today.
	The Leitch analysis is central to how we regard the problem. Leitch analysed the skills that we need not simply for today, but for the emerging economy of 2020. If all our concentration is on the huge problems of today's recession, we will miss the opportunity to provide our work force with the skills that they need for tomorrow. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor) put his finger on one of the key issues: it is not just a matter of providing skillsI shall return to the question of skills and qualificationsbut of providing the right skills for the jobs of tomorrow. The STEM agendascience, technology, engineering and mathematics is absolutely fundamental to that. We have learned a significant lesson over the past six to nine months about depending heavily on the service sector, particularly the financial services sector, for our economy. It used to be the proud boast that we were the financial centre of the world, but once that imploded, we were left short in the area of actually making things. We need to build the skills of tomorrow such as our science base, which is second only to that of the United States, and our engineering prowess, which ranks alongside that of any nation in the world.

Phil Willis: I readily accept that we do not live in a certain world, and we have never experienced anything like the current recession before. We have never seen the collapse of global capitalism in such a way, because nations such as China and India were never part of a global capitalist system before. My point is that being so heavily reliant on the service sector has caused major problems during this economic downturn. I am imploring the Minister, when looking at the skills agenda, to have 2020 constantly in sight, as Lord Leitch recommended, and not simply to concentrate on the here and now. That is a major issue.
	One of the central planks of Lord Leitch's report, which the Government readily accepted, was upskilling the nation to OECD standards. It is an attractive proposition to say that by growing the number of qualifications, we grow more skills and greater productivity and wealth creationbut in reality that is a flawed model, especially in the current situation. We need upskilling, as Lord Leitch and the Government have accepted, but we also need an emphasis on reskilling. That does not simply mean people who were in one area of employment reskilling for another. All of us, particularly in the House, are constantly looking to reskill. One sad characteristic of our nation is that the higher up the academic scale someone goes, or the higher up in a company, the more access they have to retraining at the expense of people lower down the food chain. In our report, the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills unashamedly stated that upskilling was central.
	Hon. Members have referred to the complexity of the Government's delivery system. I say to the Minister, in a spirit of comradeship, that the current system for delivering the skills agenda is not only complex but incoherent. Chris Humphries, who is the chief executive of the new UK Commission for Employment and Skills, said to our Committee that there was not an employer in the land who understood the current system. He said that when the chairman of the UKCES was appointed, 60 organisations contacted the chairman to say that they were essential in delivering the skills agenda. It is important for the Government to keep an eye on that.
	The Government have said that employers should lead the skills agenda both of today and of tomorrow. They were right to do that, as skills are central. I have commented before in the House that apprenticeships without the involvement of employers should not be called apprenticeships. I hope that in his closing remarks, the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills will assure the House that in the drive to include further education colleges and other public sector organisations in ratcheting up the number of apprenticeships, we will not go down the road of programme-led apprenticeships with no employer involved. I earnestly hope that the Government will support that point of view.
	Employer-led schemes using Train to Gain were a great idea when Lord Leitch delivered his report, but we must remember that he carried out his analysis when the economic cycle was on the up, employment was virtually full and we were looking forward to yet more quarters of unprecedented quarter-on-quarter growth. Employers are now shedding labour. They are not looking to take on apprentices, and in many cases, despite what the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) said about his constituency, they are not looking to provide skills for workers. They are trying to cut their costs. There is not a Member in the House who would not accept that it would be tragic if that were all that was going to happen. I am looking to the Government not simply to keep to their mantra because they have set policy objectives, but to be fleet of foot and recognise that we have to make employers an attractive offer to maintain their training, and in particular to retrain and upskill their workers.
	I should like the Minister to respond to a point that I hoped the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) would make, if he had been in his place. A real problem is that this recession will hit 16 and 17-year-olds harder than any previous recession. Many skilled workers are coming on to the employment market. They are used to working, and employers are used to having them in their businesses, so they will become very attractive to employers when jobs are available. My concern is for 16-year-olds leaving school for whatever reason. I do not believe that the Government would be wise to raise the school leaving age this September. That would be a foolish mistake, as we would just have mass absenteeism. However, we must ensure that we make employers an attractive offer to employ 16-year-olds. If they are unemployed for three, six or nine months, in many cases that becomes a pattern for the rest of their lives.
	Why can a 19-year-old carry a 1,000 recruitment and retention premium for their employera golden hellowhereas a 16-year-old cannot? Why does a 19-year-old attract a 1,000 training premium, but a 16-year-old does not? The answer may well be, Well, we want those people to do apprenticeships. However, at the top of the employment boom, only one in 10 employers took on an apprentice. If we want to engage employers to take on 16-year-olds and help with their training and employment, we must be flexible with our policies. To hell with saying that there is a divide because of the machinery of Government. We need a comprehensive policy on careers guidance, employment and training to ensure that from the age of 16 onwards, everyone is entitled to a training package that is world-class and second to none. That is a policy that my party and I will earnestly support.

Anne Snelgrove: Swindon is in the national economic spotlight, but it is one of the most productive towns in the country, with arguably the best business location and most highly skilled and hard-working work force. Yet even we are not isolated from the global downturn that is affecting every community in the developed world. There have been job losses in Swindon across all sectorsmanufacturing, distribution, finance and service. However, the Government are providing real help to give people skills to get back to work. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we are not going to turn our back on those who lose their jobs. I thank him for that commitment and add mine.
	As the House will know, Swindon has a strong connection with transport manufacturing, from railways to cars. Hon. Members will be aware that Honda, one of the biggest employers in the south-west of England, has closed its factory for four months, but its commitment to Swindon is not in any doubt. About 1,200 people will continue to work full time at the plant during the shutdown, and the remaining 2,500 employees will receive their full basic pay, without shift bonuses, for the first two months. That will be reduced to 60 per cent. for the rest of the period. Honda has made that commitment to Swindon because it does not want to lose its skilled work force. Although it has not asked the Government for any financial help, it has asked for help with skills training. I am very pleased by how the Government have responded, through the regional development agency and the Government office for the south-west.
	Businesses large and small across Swindon have been hit by the international financial storm. We hear about the Hondas, Tycos and Woolworths, but we do not hear about the one or two people made redundant by small businesses. My town has seen hard times before, such as the collapse of rail manufacturing 30 years ago, but due to the resilience of people in Swindon, it has recovered, attracted new businesses and emerged stronger. I have absolutely no doubt that, with the Government's support, it will do the same in future. It has the location and the motivated work force, but we need to keep our work force at a skills level that will compete with anywhere in Europe and the world. That is why Government commitment and, better still, Government action on training have been so important to us in the past few months.
	To that end, as a constituency MP I am working with the regional development agency to ensure that Honda, for example, gets the investment in skills that it needs to be sustainable in future. As deputy to the regional Minister, I have a responsibility for and interest in all businesses in the south-west. I was delighted by the RDA's response and by the fact that it is leading the region's response by helping businesses and their work force through the recession and by sustaining the economy in preparation for a return to growth. In Swindon, we have had a great deal of help from Steve Richards, the head of business development at the RDA, and Tony Bray, its area director. I pay tribute to them and their colleagues for their good work.
	The RDA is working from the grass roots to the strategic level. I am sorry to say that Opposition Members have pledged to get rid of it, because they do not particularly want such regional support. Without it, there would be no co-ordination, no training packages and no one to work with Swindon's businesses. The RDA ensures that information is shared between agencies on, for example, skills shortages. That means that action on the ground is informed by current developments. It avoids duplication and maximises the effective use of scarce resources. Direct support has been given by investing an additional 450,000 in Learning Works for All, which the south-west TUC runs. It promotes training in businesses.
	Last year, I visited the trade union centre at New college in Swindon to talk to regional manager Helen Cole about unionlearn's work. I was told about U-Net, the recently launched network of learning centres across the south-west, and I met people who have benefited from learning at work. It is a great example of what happens when unions, employers and further education work together. Representatives have worked hard to place learning on employers' agendas and I applaud their work, which is even more important during a recession.
	The RDA also provides direct support by extending the graduates in business scheme, which places graduates with local businesses beyond the original 2008 deadline, at a cost of 1.5 million.
	We are getting support for the region's strategic companies through a dedicated case officer, who can act as a broker for a company in dealing with the relevant public sector agencies, gathering information and championing issues that the business raises. That is important and our local businesses have asked for it. They do not have time to make all those contacts and it is vital that we have an organisation such as the RDA to do it for them.
	Through management of the regional Business Link franchise, the RDA has supported a stronger focus on helping employers access a range of skills services and advice, including Train to Gain and the leadership and management training programme. In contrast, the Conservative party would abolish the Train to Gain workplace training programme. In tough economic times, people need more, not fewer opportunities to train. Why would Conservatives phase out the contribution to the apprenticeship programme?
	In my office, I employ an apprentice, Jennylee, who is studying for an NVQ in administration. She does four days a week in my office and one day a week in college. It is a good thing for other hon. Members to get involved in. Jennylee is a great asset to our office, and would be to any apprenticeship scheme. Some members of my family who did not go on to higher education trained as apprentices. My cousin Barrie, who is still with the same company that he joined as an apprentice some 25 years ago, is a shining example of how someone can become an apprentice at an early age and work through the ranks to a responsible and highly paid job. I commend the Government for bringing back apprentices. During Barrie's time as an apprentice in the 1980s, apprenticeships were cut by the Thatcher Government.
	The Government are providing real help for people to get and keep jobs. No one who is worried about losing a job will be left without support. Such support will be available for everyone who is at risk or who has recently lost a job, not only the long-term unemployed. Colleges and other training providers are being asked to bid for funds and that means that people can get the help they need without having to go to the jobcentre.
	My constituents have benefited enormously from the funding that the Labour Government have given to rebuild colleges locally. Recently, New college completed a 4.08 million project for classroom extensions and refurbishment, of which 1.02 million came from the Learning and Skills Council. Before that, the college had another project for classrooms and a sports hall. Projects are under way and being completedI am sure that recent delays will soon be sorted out.
	Swindon college is in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills) and I understand that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is due to visit it next week. It has had a 15.5 million project to rebuild the college on the North Star site. I hope that my hon. Friend will see how successful it has been and the good work that the college does in the vocational sector.
	Further education in Swindon has done well under Labour. By 1997, the Conservatives had let further education go to rack and ruin. I was in education for many years and I saw it happen. There was simply no capital spend on FE. Any complaints from the Torieswe heard some todayare therefore simply opportunistic.
	The priority remains securing the survival of viable businesses and retaining jobs, but it is also important to plan for the upturn and help businesses such as Honda and its supply chain ensure that they are fit for the future. There are several challenges: ensuring that there is a viable supply chain; supporting the development of the next generation of products; andmost essentiallysupporting the retention of a skilled and motivated work force who are well placed to respond to increased demand. The Government are up for that. They are providing the support, and I hope that hon. Members of all parties will back the Government's work on such important matters.

Alan Simpson: No, I am not going to accept any more interventions, because that just takes someone else's time.
	I would argue in favour of an increase in Government spending and in favour of the Government accepting the fiscal responsibilities of raising the cash to fund that expenditure. However, this will not avoid difficult decisions that have to be made along the way. The only thing that we can say about a recession is that it always contains the silver lining of allowing the Government to choose to come out of it in a different place from where we into it. So it is with the decisions that this House will face over the coming years.
	We have to be clear about the nature of the economic transformation that we face, which has to be rooted in our skills and apprenticeships programme. That is why, if we are to have an equivalent of Obama's Apollo programme moment, the blueprint or starting point for me would be the Government's Building a low-carbon economy document. We recognise that by 2010, there will be opportunities for so-called green-collar jobs in a global market that has the prospect of being worth $700 billion. Economic prospects, skills prospects and transformation prospects go hand in hand if we take them seriously.
	One of the problems that we face in doing that is recognising that our skills agenda can no longer be detached from changing the demand side of our economy. Other parts of the EU have been much more proactive in doing so. Britain needs to show some humility and follow suit. We already know that in the energy sector, the electricity companies are saying that even in a recession they anticipate a shortage of 9,000 jobs by 2015. We have to plan and train to fill these known gaps in the market, as well as the gaps that we expect to face in a market that we are seeking to transform.
	Obama has sought to do this with his own Apollo programme, making no apologies for the fact that it is rooted in a commitment to deliver 5 million jobs, on the basis of $150 billion of direct investment to transform the nature of the US economy into a more sustainable one. That, for me, is where Britain's future will be found as well.
	The House has made certain commitments in the Energy Act 2008. We have pledged to come back to the House and the country by 2010 with feed-in tariff schemes, along similar lines to those that already operate in Germany. Those scheme have delivered more than 250,000 new jobs in four years, and the domestic industry in Germany is now worth 30 billion.
	The thing that scares me, having done some work on the transformation of housing stock myself, is that, at every point during the kitting out of my house, the architects and the builders told me that we would have to source the various elements from Germany, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden or Franceanywhere, in fact, apart from the UK. We know that we are going to change the nature of our domestic energy market. We need to change the skill bases of the apprenticeships that are being offered now to do so. We cannot wait until we start to transform the market, and then realise that the jobs are going to non-British workers because we have not delivered the skill base that our workers are entitled to expect from us, in order to access the jobs that we are generating. This is not rocket science; it is simply a matter of market and economic transformation.
	The same applies in relation to fuel poverty. The debate in the UK has been about the construction of up to 200,000 new houses a year, some of which might be eco-homes, after 2016. In reality, the challenge lies in the 25 million houses that people are living in today. The number of job and skill opportunities that exist for the refurbishment of that housing stock is vast. I have looked at some of the intervention schemes that are operating in other parts of Europe, and I want to convey to Members that the difficulties there are not about reaching out to young people who are not academic high-flyers and getting them into the schemes. The difficulty is in finding enough apprenticeships to cater for the demand. The young people there see the prospect of real jobs and real skills that will kit them out to deliver solutions in the 21st century, and they are queuing up to be part of that transformation process.
	We will not be able to shop our way out of the recession, but we will be able to build and transform our way out of it. That also applies in the context of transportation. I have heard numerous Members talk about initiatives that are being taken in the vehicle sector to maintain jobs. However, the real question is whether we can transform that whole sector, over the next five years, into one that delivers vehicles, all of which have to operate within a carbon emissions standard of 100 g/km. Other countries are already doing this, and if we do not, we will find that our kids just do not have the skills to deliver for tomorrow's sustainable market.
	My plea to the Minister is simply to continue to invest, and to increase the volume of investment, but also to tie training into the direct intervention measures to which other parts of the Government are committed. We need an approach to training and apprenticeships that is about joined-up doing, not just about joined-up saying. If we can achieve that, the generation of young people who are hungry for skills for the 21st century will be there to thank us, as will the fuel poor and those who want to be part of our carbon reduction agenda. Whole societies and communities will see that this is the shape of a better future. It will be different from the one left for us as an inheritance when we came into power in 1997. I had hoped that we could expect more from the Opposition, who say that they want to be part of that future, but who are just not prepared to put the money up to deliver it.

Si�n Simon: Many people have spoken this afternoon and several contributors have said that they found the debate rather disappointing. I think that, with the exception of that from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the contributions from the Front Benchers have been very disappointing.  [Interruption.] For those who have been here throughout the debate, however, the contributions from the Back Benchers have been interesting, constructive and worthwhileand that is almost as true of the Opposition Back Benchers as of the Government Back Benchers.
	As to what we heard about apprenticeships from both Opposition Front-Bench teams, all I will say is that it was extraordinary nonsense. The hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) said that we needed more apprenticeships, especially for those aged 19 and above. In 1996, when the Conservatives were in charge, there were 67,000 apprenticeships; last year, there were 225,000and next year there will be an additional 35,000 specifically in response to the recession. Yet Conservative Members tell us that we need more!

Mary Creagh: The new Whitwood campus, in the neighbouring constituency of Pontefract and Castleford, will open in a couple of weeks. May I ask my hon. Friend to visit that brand-new vocational training campus, and also to speed up approval for the city centre campus in Wakefield about which he and I have spoken in private?

Tim Loughton: I am grateful for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, this topical subject requires urgent attention, but yet again, it is not Government time being given over to debating children's issues, but Opposition timethat has been the case ever since the Government created the post of a children's Minister.
	Despite a constant stream of well-intentioned legislation on child protection and child-related issues, and despite the best endeavours of many hard-working and dedicated professionals, the child protection system is just not working. Last November's Ofsted report suggested that up to four children a week in England die from abuse or neglectand two thirds of those killed or hurt were babies under a year old. That includes cases where parents or carers were not directly culpable for causing death, but the figure is still substantially more than the one to two deaths a week assumed previously by children's charities, and it is an alarming revelation almost nine years after the tragic death of Victoria Climbi, which has become synonymous with the cancer of child cruelty. From her death came the comprehensive report by the highly respected Herbert Laming, who is undertaking a follow-up review in the light of the baby P case.
	Subsequently we have had the Children Act 2004, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, the integrated children's system, the child assessment framework and, most recently, ContactPoint. We have local safeguarding children boards, directors of children's services departments and so on. It is not the quantity of legislation that is at fault, but the quality, content and direction. Indeed, there is now a growing body of opinion that many of the structural changes that we have seen over the yearsespecially the constant upheaval and drain on resources and morale that they have brought about over the last five or more yearsare actually undermining the effectiveness of the child protection system.
	Following the trial of those responsible for the death of baby P in November, the spotlight again fell on Haringey children's services department, and particularly its director. When challenged about the findings in that awful caseand when elected members had fled the sceneSharon Shoesmith responded that as far as she was concerned, her social workers had done their jobs properly, all the procedures had been followed and she would not be resigning. By the way, a 17-month-old boy had died in horrific circumstances, despite being on the council's at-risk register and having had contact with various professionals on at least 60 occasions.
	Absurdly, therefore, we are expected to accept that as long as the right pages in the rule book were followed and the requisite number of boxes were ticked, the system is working properly. Child protection has undoubtedly become a big enterprise, and many more people now have an interest in it than, say, 10 years ago, which is quite right. But are we in danger of having created a sophisticated system that has inadvertently put the protection of that system ahead of the protection of the vulnerable children whom the system is surely there to protect and prioritise?

Joan Humble: The hon. Gentleman is rightly drawing attention to some horrific cases in which children died in dreadful circumstances. However, he is not drawing attention to the good work that so many social workers do, and how many children they save. When I meet social workers in Blackpoolespecially those who work with childrenthey are proud of the work that they do. They work hard to protect the sort of children the hon. Gentleman is talking about.

Edward Balls: May I correct a mistake made by the hon. Gentleman? At no time have I ever claimed that I asked the advice of the Information Commissioner in the particular case of baby P. In a letter of 18 November to the shadow spokesmen, I quoted a decision that the Information Commissioner had taken on a different case in 2006, in which he decided that it would be wrong to release that report at that time. I quoted that in support of the decision that I was making not to publish the information in this case. I have never made such a claim. I did not seek the advice of the Information Commissioner in this case. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that statement, because he knows it not to be true.

Tim Loughton: I have given way twice, which I think is generous. The Secretary of State will have ample opportunity to respond shortly.
	We agree with David Hencke of  The Guardian. The Secretary of State put it succinctly in his letter of 18 November to my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State when he said:
	the purpose of a Serious Case Review is to learn the lessons from what happened....The most effective and efficient way of learning lessons from these tragedies is to provide an environment in which professionals can freely discuss the circumstances of a case as openly as possible.
	How can we learn the lessons when the reviews are not published in full and there are serious question marks over the accuracy and veracity of what they investigate and recommend? The need is not only for political and public scrutiny: how can other local authorities share best practice and learn from inadequate practice when they cannot see the reviews in full? It is nonsense.

Tim Loughton: The hon. Lady was a social worker in a former existence and knows much of these matters, but I bet my bottom dollar that she did not spend up to 80 per cent. of her time when she was in practice shackled to the assessment procedures, filling in forms or working on the computer. Instead, I bet that she was out in the field sharing face-to-face time with her clients. If not, there was certainly something wrong with the system.
	Separately, the General Social Care Council has reported that social workers are spending at least 60 to 70 per cent. of their time on administrative work as opposed to client contact. Much of this time is spent filling in forms to ensure accountability rather than working with the family. The London borough of Sutton reported that, 20 years ago, only 30 per cent. of a social worker's time was spent on paperwork. Again, more time is being spent on protecting the system than protecting the clients.
	Not surprisingly, increased work loads caused by rising demand, together with staff vacancies, have increased stress levels in the social work force. Indeed, the magazine  Community Care, a key publication for those working in social care, recently commented on the difficulty of finding a social worker who
	is not so stressed that they leave to be replaced by agency staff.
	Chief amongst the bureaucratic obstacle course is the integrated children's service.

Edward Balls: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from House to the end of the Question and add:
	agrees that safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility; recognises that keeping children safe is a top priority for this Government, commends action taken by the Government following the tragic death of Baby P, to keep children safe in Haringey; welcomes the requirement that all local safeguarding children's boards responsible for serious case reviews judged inadequate by Ofsted convene an independently chaired panel to reconsider the review and report to the Secretary of State; agrees with the Deputy Children's Commissioner and the NSPCC that while comprehensive executive summaries should be published full serious case reviews should remain confidential; affirms its conviction that the Every Child Matters reforms are soundly based and essential in driving change for children; welcomes evidence in the joint chief inspectors' third report on safeguarding children of improvements since 2005 in children's services and outcomes for children and young people; commends the development by the inspectorates of new local area assessment and inspection arrangements; welcomes the commissioning of Lord Laming to report on progress being made across the country in implementing effective arrangements for safeguarding children; agrees with his recommendation that serious case review panels should be chaired by people independent of the reporting agencies; commends the creation of a Social Work Taskforce to review frontline social work, including the role and development of the Integrated Children's System in support of its work; and further commends the recent announcement of the first stage of delivery of ContactPoint, which experts agree is vital to keep children safe.
	I shall turn to the Opposition motion shortly and reply to the points made by the shadow spokesperson in the opening speech.
	It is the first duty of Governmentindeed, it is our shared dutyto do everything we can to keep our children and young people safe and protected from harm. There is no greater responsibility on us as Government Ministers and Members of the House, so it is right that we ask ourselves tonight whether there is more that we can all do to keep children safe from harm. That is why I welcome the debate on this most important issue.
	Although I was disappointed that the shadow Secretary of State chose not to open the debate, I start, notwithstanding the speech that we have just heard and the fact that we disagree on some points, by noting that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has made some important contributions on these issues in recent years.
	The number of child deaths has fallen in recent years, and sharply so for the youngest children, but any abuse or non-accidental death is wrong. I know that many hon. Members will have reacted to the tragic case of baby P, as I did, with incomprehension. How could adults perpetrate such terrible acts of evil against a little boy? When professionals became aware of the risks to the child, why did they not act sooner to protect him from harm? Such a tragic and appalling case must rightly raise wider questions of public concern about the safety of vulnerable children around the country. Also, as the hon. Gentleman said, when some local authorities are judged inadequate in their safeguarding of children, it is rightly a matter of grave public concern.
	It is my judgment that following the death of Victoria Climbi and the Laming inquiry, we have put in place a strong framework for tackling child abuse. It is our expectation that social workers, GPs, nurses and police officers see the world from the child's perspective and put the child's safety first. But we also know, as we have seen in recent weeks and months, that there is still a long way to go until we have the best possible child protection arrangements in every part of the country.
	That is why, as we have heard in the debate, we have taken a number of actions in recent months to improve further child protection, which include asking Lord Laming to provide a further report on progress in implementing the reforms that were introduced after the Climbi inquiry, with proposals for further improvement to accelerate improvement across the country. We have demanded that local authorities take action in response to any serious case review that has been judged to be inadequate. We have set up a new social work taskforce, to be chaired by the chief executive of Camden council, Moira Gibb, to reform social work training and practice, and we have begun, as we heard, the roll-out of ContactPoint with the widespread support of professionals and practitioners alike. All these reforms are all vital to keep children safe and, despite the comments that we have heard, it is still my genuine and fervent hope that we can build a cross-party consensus on the matter in the House and in the country. That is the best way to keep children safe.

John Hemming: The Secretary of State stated that the number of deaths from child abuse and neglect had fallen sharply in recent years. On what basis does he justify that statement, and how would he justify it in the light of the Department's continued refusal to provide figures in an auditable form as to serious case reviews following the death of a child?

Edward Balls: I shall make some progress and then take the hon. Gentleman's intervention.
	I said that I would turn to the Opposition motion, and I will do so. I want to take seriously the points that they make in the motion and in this debate and show where we disagree and where, with a little more thought and intellectual engagement, we could achieve a consensus. They start the motion by pointing to the failings in Haringey, and say that they mean that the lessons from the Victoria Climbi inquiry have not been learned. Indeed, in the Queen's Speech debate a few weeks ago, the shadow Secretary of State went further and said:
	Lord Laming has said that the foundation of current children's services is robust, but we are not persuaded of that assertion.[ Official Report, 11 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 773.]
	Other Conservative Members have called into question the very Every Child Matters reforms, although the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has not; I absolve him from that. Those Conservative Members have even called for a new inquiry to investigate the child protection system from first principles. I agree with Lord Laming, who says that that would not be the right approach. In his letter to me, dated 1 December, he said:
	I note that, understandably, there have been calls for a further public Inquiry into the services in Haringey following the death of Baby P. But such a course of action would, in my view, set back the progress that has been made in many places. It could undermine important developments gained and progress made during the past six years and possibly put on hold planned further work. Furthermore, it would divert effort from the actions needed now to keep children safe in Haringey.
	In its response to Lord Laming, the NSPCC says:
	We welcome the vision of Every Child Matters. There has been significant change in children's services over the past five years.
	Indeed, it goes on to say:
	the Every Child Matters programme has the potential to be the most significant achievement for children in recent times.
	In the tragic case of baby P, which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham cited at length, the inspectors did identify clear failings in management, oversight and practice. That is why we took the exceptional action that we took. However, as the chief inspector told me, the failings that she identified were exceptional. So we profoundly disagree that we have not learned the lessons or that we are not properly implementing the recommendations of the Victoria Climbi inquiry. As I said, much good work is being done in many areas by social workers, police officers, GPs and health professionals, who do incredibly tough jobs, often in challenging circumstances, with difficult judgments to make every day to keep children safe. They get no publicity when they make the right call, and we should give them our praise and support.
	At the same time, we are not complacent. In summer last year, the joint chief inspectors' report concluded that more work was needed; the same happened in respect of the end of year Ofsted evaluation. That is why we have ordered all local authorities to look again at all serious case reviews where there was an inadequate judgment and why we have asked Lord Laming to provide us with a progress report. However, to ignore, as the Opposition motion does, the progress made in many areas would not only undermine the achievements of social workers around the country, but put that progress at risk. That would be the wrong thing to do.

Edward Balls: I did that last time, and I explained the different basis for the figures. We are not disagreeing. Too many children die non-accidental deaths, and we need to deal with that. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going to refer to his intervention in which he attempted to pin on me the idea that I had asked the Information Commissioner for advice, even though he knows that that is not the case. If he has a decent intervention, he might make it; I will take it if he wants.
	The second thing that the Opposition called for is for all serious case reviews to be published in full. We are determined to ensure that we do all we can to guarantee that children in every area are kept safe. That is why it is crucial that we learn from mistakes, which is why we carry out serious case reviews. Where the full report or executive summary is inadequate, that is not good enough, and we have asked for all such reports to be investigated. We have also said, following Lord Laming's initial recommendation, that the overview panel for every serious case review should be independently chaired. Indeed, I have asked the new chair of the local safeguarding children board in Haringey, Graham Badman, to re-run the baby P serious case review, such is the seriousness of the issue.
	The Opposition call for all serious case reviews to be published in full, but we fundamentally disagree for two reasons. First, we would not want to compromise the right to privacy or to protection of other siblings or vulnerable children involved who could, in all likelihood, be identified even if their names were redacted; and secondly, serious case reviews rely on the open and honest involvement of representatives all of the agencies involved. I had to rely on my judgment, and that is what underpinned the letters to Opposition spokespeople that I sent on a series of occasions. Let us hear what the deputy children's commissioner says:
	A system which ensures we can establish the full facts behind any tragedy is essential for keeping children safe. I believe that a confidential process which enables agencies to thoroughly and effectively examine all relevant facts is crucial to securing this goal, supported by a comprehensive executive summary which makes public the key issues and recommendations for change.
	That is also the view taken by the NSPCC, which has said:
	The publication of full SCR reports will change the climate in which they are produced and reduce their value. It is probable that the process would move from one focusing on what could be learnt to one focusing on legalistic technicalities, with an end-product that is weak and of negligible value.
	The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said that I was distorting the view of the NSPCC and that it has had to correct the position. Let me read from the letter that was written to me by the acting chief executive of the NSPCC on 4 December:
	We therefore endorse the view that full
	serious case reviews
	should not be published.
	It is there on the page in black and white. That is the view of the experts. It is not the view of the Opposition, but in my view they are out on a limb and outside the consensus on this very important matter, and if they prevailed that would put children at risk.

Edward Balls: My hon. Friend is right. That is why we publish those reviews. We have also said that executive summaries should have a clear view of all the lessons learned from every individual case. In fact, we have asked Lord Laming to tell us how we can make those reports better in future. In the case of baby P, it is important that there is a full and better executive summary in the public domain. The reason why I am not making them public is not because of the advice to me from the Information Commissioner. As I have made clear on repeated occasions in writing and in this House, I did not seek his advice on this matter. It is my judgmentbecause the professionals tell me so, not only the lawyers but the NSPCC and the deputy children's commissionerthat such disclosure would put children's lives at risk.
	This is not something to play politics with but something on which there should be a consensus. I think that it is time that we got off this subject and on to the serious business.

Edward Balls: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has come to the House to participate in this debate. Even though he has been sitting on the Front Bench all this time, he has clearly not been listening to what I have said. I said that the reason I made this decision was not to protect professionalswhy would I want to protect professionals who are guilty of making mistakes? I made the decision because I want to protect children who would be put at risk of harm if we made these reports public. That is also the view of the NSPCC and the deputy children's commissioner, and the consensus among experts. On 18 November, in a letter to the shadow spokesman, I said that I had made the decision in the light of the Information Commissioner's decision in 2006. I made it clear in the House when we discussed these matters that I had not asked for his advice in this case, but I was relying on a past ruling. I then wrote to the hon. Gentlemanthis may be another letter that he failed to read and act uponon 25 November, saying:
	On this point, my letter to you of 18 November explained that I had been advised, given the strong terms of the decision of the Information Commissioner in 2006, that I should not allow anyone, even parliamentarians, to see the Report.
	I went on to explain why, on that particular issue, I had changed my mind. I said:
	In your point of order, you ask me to 'approach the Information Commissioner to establish if a copy of the serious case review can be made available to the public'. As you know, my letter of 18 Nov referred to the Information Commissioner's 2006 decision. At no point have I asked for a ruling from the Information Commissioner on the question of publishing this
	serious case review
	and I have not claimed to have done so. Nor do I intend to do so. It is my judgement, consistent with 'Working Together to Safeguard Children', that it is imperative to keep the SCR confidential.
	That is what I wrote in November, before and after the debate. My reason is not to protect professionals, but to keep children safe. That is what I thought was the purpose of this debate, and that is why I urged the Opposition to drop playing politics with this issue and join the consensus to keep children safe. That is the best way to approach it.

Edward Balls: It would have been much better if the hon. Gentleman had decided to speak in this debate instead of just intervening from the Front Bench. We might then have thought that his commitment on these issues was serious rather than just posturing. I made the following clear to him in a letter on 18 November:
	You may be aware that the Information Commissioner took a decision on a request to make available a Serious Case Review in 2006. This risk was one of the considerations taken into account by him in that case.
	I made it clear in that letter, and in the House, that based on that 2006 ruling and our judgment concerning the safety of children, we would not publish the serious case reviews. I wrote to him again a week and a half later [ Interruption. ] The issues being raised in this debate are intended to divert attention from the real issues. My letter of the 28 November to the hon. Gentleman says:
	I have not claimed to have done so
	that is, to go to the information commissioner for a ruling. It continues:
	Nor do I intend to do so. It is my judgment, consistent with  Working Together to Safeguard Children, that it is imperative to keep the SCR confidential
	That judgment is shared by the NSPCC and the deputy children's commissioner.
	We should not be playing politics with this issue. We are doing the right thing for the safety of children, and the Conservatives' persistent attempt to find a political difference is at the expense of that safety, which is why I reject their arguments outright.

Edward Balls: The detached observer would take seriously the views of the NSPCC and the deputy children's commissioner that the right thing to do, in order to keep children safe, is not to publish these reports. They would reject the idea that that advice should be ignored by those on the Opposition Front Bench in order to play politicsespecially the shadow Secretary of State, who did not even bother to make the main speech in this debate. I shall move on.

Edward Balls: In a second. I have two points to make in the time remaining to me. I completely agree that we need well-trained, well-led and well-motivated social workers who spend as much time as possible with vulnerable children and their families. That is why we have set up the social work taskforce, and why we are considering the quality of training, leadership and mid-career training. They have an important job, and it is important that we work hard with the taskforce to implement that process. I have also asked the taskforce to make it a priority to review the effectiveness of procurement and IT using the integrated children's system, which was an important part of the speech made by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. I know that there have been concerns that the IT systems have not worked as well as they should in some areas, but the integrated children's system does not ask practitioners to collect more information than they should to do their jobs. As we heard earlier, it is vital that proper detailed records are kept. In fact, the reason why Scandinavian children's protection systems are commended is that Sweden and Denmark use the ICS system, as do Canada and Australia.
	 Computing magazine reported last year that the head of safeguarding in Kingston, Mr. Duncan Clark, believed that
	top-quality professionals should be able to treat the system
	ICS
	as an everyday part of their work.
	It reported that Mr. Clark had said:
	We are not asking staff to be IT bods, we are asking them to learn to use a tool to enhance practice...Any distraction caused will be short-lived. If staff are still stuck at their desks because they are not adapting, they are probably doing less harm there than in the field, because that is not a good-quality social worker.
	Myriad quotations from the experts in the field state that ICS, well used, is a good system, but that we have to address the IT issues and ensure that social workers have the training to use it well, as they do in Sweden, Denmark, Canada and Australia. That is what we are asking the taskforce to do.

Annette Brooke: In principle, I welcome the debate. It is important to hold a constructive discussion on child protection. However, I am not sure about the quality of the debate.
	Yesterday The Good Childhood Inquiry was published. It reinforced the fact that every child should be entitled to live in a loving and safe environment. Today we are discussing child abuse and deaths at the hands of parents and carers, and we cannot deny that, however we play around with numbers, the figure remains too high. We have spoken a lot about deathsthe tragedies are before usbut we should also remember that child abuse can permanently damage children. They grow into adults who in turn mayI stress the word mayabuse others. We should not play with the statistics. We just have to do better. Child protection should be at the heart of our societal aims and embedded as a priority in the whole of the children's work force.
	On the whole, we are getting better at listening to children. Indeed, the Government have made great strides, with meaningful consultation with children and young people. Looking back on the tragic Victoria Climbi case, I recall that none of the agencies ever spoke to Victoria. We recognise the importance of that today, but as was said earlier, half the children killed or seriously injured through abuse and neglect are babies less than a year old. A further 20 per cent. are toddlers under the age of five.
	When younger children are the victims, professionals must have the opportunity to examine and assess them carefully. Communication can come in all sorts of guises. In the baby P case, the baby did not appear to have been seen in any detail by social workers. At the heart of our debate should be listening to and focusing on the children and ensuring that we are thinking about their needs and best interests.
	The Government must listen and respond more quickly at times; I speak in frustration rather than confrontation. Let me give just two examples. In the debate on the Children Act 2004, we spoke at great length about the quantity and quality of social workers and about how the priority for any new systemmore important than the system itselfwas to have high-quality well-trained front-line workers. We spoke a lot about the need for recruitment and retention. I welcome the setting up of the social work taskforce, but it seems that it took yet another series of tragedies to bring that belatedly about.
	The Audit Commission published a report in October that concluded:
	there is little evidence that children's trusts have improved outcomes for children.
	I asked a question about that to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, who replied:
	We are very disappointed that it chose to take such a negative approach,
	and said that the report
	draws on fieldwork...almost a year old.[ Official Report, 4 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 115.]
	The response to studies that shed a critical light on services for our children, as the UNICEF report too did, should not be just to rubbish the methodology. A qualified comment is fine, but should we not always consider how we can do things better?
	I know that the Government are responding on children's trusts. It would be interesting to know exactly what is planned and how it would dovetail into the safeguarding children agenda. The Government often respond by referring to their national initiativesWe've done this, and so on. There is no doubt that the Government's children plan, its update and some other strategies are important and to be welcomed. In fact, I would like a national strategy for preventing child deaths, abuse and neglect as wellthat is another question for the Minister who will respond to the debatebut surely what is really important is constantly reviewing what is happening at the local level.
	At the time of the debate on the 2004 Act there was cross-party support on the need for better multi-agency working and a clear line of accountabilitylessons that were to be learned, but appear not to have been put into practice in the case of baby P. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) on the dignified way in which she has pushed for the truth and for improvements in her local social services.
	Lessons can undoubtedly be learned from serious case reviews. Training and work force-related recommendations need to be acted upon. The Liberal Democrats have called for serious case reviews to be published, albeit suitably anonymised and perhaps with certain details removed. I do not think that we will return to the crossfire that we have just seen, but it is important to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), who could not tell anybody else what he had been allowed to read in the serious case review, was convinced that there were issuesthe most crucial issuesthat needed to be raised publicly. Indeed, that was also the view of others who read that report. This is not about putting children in danger; it is about improving safeguarding practices.
	It is important to be clear about the situation with regard to the Information Commissioner. The final point in his letter, dated 21 November, stated:
	The ICO stands ready to provide advice on what may be disclosed on a case by case basis.
	However, it has been confirmed that his view on the matter in question was not sought. I therefore do not believe that we have come to the end of the line.
	I appreciate that the Secretary of State fears that people would not participate fully. Indeed, Lord Laming has been asked how the quality, consistency and impact of serious case reviews could be improved, and whether the right balance between the public executive summary and the confidential serious case review has been struck. I would like to ask the Secretary of State whether we can be assured that he will approach this question with an open mind. He has already stated that he is against the reviews being made public, and it is clear that there are differences of opinion that need to be evaluated. For example, a senior figure who was brought into Haringey supported the idea that a large part of that case review should be made public. I am looking for a balanced approach, because at the end of the day, we have to learn lessons.
	The Ofsted findings from 92 serious case reviews were shocking, and most Members have suggested that there is much more to do. More than a third were found to be inadequate. Commenting on an in-depth report on 50 of the cases, Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools said:
	This report and the latest figures available clearly show that many children's services are failing to learn fast enough from the most serious cases of abuse and neglect. Too many opportunities are missed and too many vulnerable children are still being let down.
	We cannot be complacent. Some things have improved, but we must look for more.
	The length of time that some serious case reviews have taken has also been highlighted, with some taking between three and four years. They must be completed quickly, and they must focus on the child. They must not just be descriptive; they need to analyse why things have happened, and they must be independent.
	We are aware that the Secretary of State is keen to follow the recommendations of the NSPCC. The society has recommended that Ministers should report to Parliament on a biennial basis with a review of learning from serious case reviews of child deaths, and set out how each relevant Whitehall Department will respond to the recommendations. Perhaps a commitment to that practice, while the Laming review is being undertaken, would take us forward.
	My instinct is that the local safeguarding children board should be independently chaired. It cannot be right that the director of children's services should hold that post. I have been gathering data from local councils, and I was interested in a comment, offering the opposite viewthat no one else would have the drive to take matters forward and challenge other agencies. That highlights how important the person specification, recruitment, appointment, support and training of the chairman of the board and its membership will be. I am sure that the board will also need extra resources and strengthening.
	We have mentioned the Ofsted inspection service, and I understand that Ofsted will review how it approaches its inspections. I welcome the Local Government Association's summit recommendation that the association should discuss with Ofsted how it can most effectively assess the quality of child protection practice and help councils and their partners to improve.
	When we were talking about those issues in the Select Committee, it was noted that Ofsted appeared, on the surface, to have a strong education bias. There are issues about the heads of children's services, the majority of whom have come via the education route. I welcome the fact that there will be a new course at the National College for School Leadership, and I would like to ask whether all directors will be required to take it, because management and accountability are all-important.
	My colleague in the other place, Baroness Walmsley, has raised the issue of the General Social Care Council codes of practice, which set out the standards expected of both social care workers and their employers in delivering social care services. There is currently a substantive difference in the status of the codes for social care workers and their employers. Compliance with the code for workers is required for those who are registered with the GSCC, but the code of practice for employers has no statutory force. Would not placing the code for employers on a statutory footing and including it within Ofsted's inspection framework ensure that employers in social care were responsible for making sure that people were suitable to enter the social care work force, to provide sufficient support and so forth?
	Training and safeguarding for the whole children's work force is absolutely vital. Obviously that includes social workers, but it is much broader than that and includes teachers, doctors and health visitors. Anybody coming into contact with children in a professional way needs to be able to recognise the signs of abuse and to be confident enough to follow them up. I believe that those two points are recognised by Ofsted and by the NSPCC. Indeed, the GSCC points out that there is no national standard for training and safeguarding.
	Tonight the official Opposition have said a lot about social workers, and I would like to place on record the fact that theirs is an incredibly difficult job: it is an undervalued occupation in which morale can easily become very low; that may be followed by a drive to move away, and with greater caseloads, the whole situation becomes self-perpetuating. This is something that we have to tackle, for the sake of giving better support to the professionals themselves. I welcome the Local Government Association campaign, which will focus on recruitment, retention and respect in children's social work.
	We discussed earlier the part of the motion that refers to
	scrapping the highly prescriptive template for the Integrated Children's System.
	I do not think I would use the word scrapping at this time, but I believe that there is a strong case for reviewing that system. Again, we should think and talk constructively about it, as there are enough criticisms around that risk is not a core focus of the current system and that there is too much paperwork and bureaucracy. That is not to say that there should be no paperwork, but if the criticism has been made, it needs to be examined.
	Throughout the change from the old to the new system, a number of academics have questioned whether it was right to get rid of the child protection register. Is there a danger that child support workers will not see the wood for the trees? Are the police being pushed off the stage a bit by the new system? Are they not brought into a situation until it is judged a crime? I think we should be prepared to ask ourselves whether we have got the right system. That does not mean changing the whole thing, but we should be brave enough to ask that.
	It seems to me right to ask Lord Laming to carry out the review at this time, and to do it fairly quicklybut is there not a case for having a fresh pair of eyes, or even a group of people coming in to see what else they might see? Obviously, Lord Laming as the architect will see things in a certain way, just as the Opposition see things in a different way from the Government, but I believe that there is a case for having that fresh pair of eyes to look at how things are working out at local level.
	We Liberals also oppose ContactPoint, purely on the basis that if we take costs and benefits in the widest sense into account, the benefits do not outweigh the costs. In the costs I include the potential risks. I have never been convinced that it will be a secure systema doubt that has been backed up by a number of reports.
	We have not paid much attention tonight to preventiona subject sadly lacking in the Opposition motion. This afternoon, fortuitously, I had an opportunity to talk to a member of the WAVE TrustWAVE stands for Worldwide Alternatives to Violencewho explained that a person's propensity to violence can be determined in the first few years of life. It may result from witnessing violence in the home, harsh parental discipline, neglect or lack of attachment. That shows us that if we really want to improve things, we must home in on preventive measures.
	The Family Nurse Partnership is an example of a good intervention. My difficulty with it is that it does not reach out far enough. I should also prefer there to be more health visitors. The number of health visitors is falling, at a time when there is a larger case load. The training has been changedit is much more generic than it used to bebut whom do parents actually trust? Their health visitor. That really does need to be reconsidered.
	The Government have put more effort into parenting classes, which are important, but much more should be done to support families. If we are to promote successful interventions by means of the strategy that I mentioned, should we not establish a national early prevention agency to drive an early prevention strategy? Every time there is a great tragedy, it is the symptoms rather than the root causes that are addressed. Public inquiries are important, but if we really want to do something, we must examine the root causes of abuse.
	Further actions that could lead to prevention include confidential hotlines for whistleblowers so that there is no doubt that a complaint is being investigated if, for example, a social worker is feeling less than supported. I often observe that when a tragic case arises, neighbours talk to the media, and they turn out to have been aware that something odd might have been going on. Why should we not set up a hotline enabling neighbours to report their concern?
	Another preventive measure that we need, about which I have said a great deal over the years, is a comprehensive system of therapeutic services. Once a child has been abused, treatment at the time may be life-saving, and may prevent the abuse from being perpetuated and affecting future generations.
	I have already mentioned the first point in the Local Government Association's five-point plan. The second is to make it easier to shift services towards prevention and early intervention. The third relates to resources, which is a big question. What we require of our children's services departments is a big ask: we cannot expect them to do their job with less than adequate resources. Fourthly, the LGA says that councils should have access to the best possible advice, which seems pretty sensible. Fifthly, links between the care and child protection services should be improved. That in itself is a subject for debate.
	I am well aware that many other Members wish to speak, so I shall merely say that this is all about family support, getting the balance right and always putting the child first. Rather than aiming for confrontation, we should look for more and more ways to reduce what I consider to be a blight on our society.

Robert Wilson: Child protection is absolutely at the top of the agenda in my constituency and I want to take the opportunity of this important debate to focus on some local issues.
	As many have said, the tragic case of baby P exposed a catalogue of failures at Haringey social services department, but it was not an isolated case. I think we all know that. My local authority, Reading, experienced a similar tragedy with the death of 3-year-old Trae-Bleu Layne, who died in October 2006 from methadone poisoning when she was injected by her mother to make her sleep. The council's handling of the case was subsequently described as inadequate by Ofsted. The child was under the supervision of Reading borough council's children's department and during the inquest into her death, the coroner was critical of the failure to do enough to safeguard her well-being. In particular, there was a failure to ensure regular visits and to monitor those visits.
	The mother was a known heroin addict and the police admitted that both they and social services staff could have done more to protect the child. The coroner concluded that, despite the mother's manipulative efforts to stop social workers visiting the house,
	the frequency for seeing Trae-Bleu fell well below the required and acceptable level.
	One would think that an episode like that would act as the strongest possible warning to a local authority, but in 2008 Reading borough council was one of only eight councils, including Haringey and Wokingham borough council, to have its child protection services deemed inadequate by Ofsted.
	The main findings of that Ofsted report make very uncomfortable reading for anyone involved in Reading. It highlighted a catalogue of failures in the children's services department. It specifically noted that key child protection assessments were not being completed within acceptable time scales, that personal information on children was not being stored in a way that was easily retrievable, and finally that there was weak performance management in the local authority's social care service.
	Although the lead councillor for children's services was sacked at a full council meeting last week for his negligence in leading that service, a whistleblower has stepped forward and described a culture of bullying in the service. If that is true, that culture undoubtedly contributed to systemic failure in the department. What I find difficult to understand is that the very people in the department who were employed to protect Reading's most vulnerable children were probably being bullied themselves. However, it is not the first Reading borough department about which I have heard allegations that a culture of bullying exists.
	Unfortunately, the bad news does not stop there. Reading borough council also has problems with its performance relating to looked-after children. The Ofsted report highlighted the disturbing fact that only a relatively low proportion of children leaving care achieve one pass or more at GCSE. I know that that is not so uncommon around the country but, if we are serious about social mobility, then surely we must ensure that vulnerable children are able to access a decent education.
	Another worrying aspect of the report was that it found that there was a
	lack of clear, agreed staff recruitment and retention strategy
	in the children's department. Reading council has stated that it wishes to take on more social workers to ease the burden on existing workers, although it appears that the reason it has not been able to recruit and retain staff is the culture of the department. That said, the poor public image of social work following the crisis after baby P, coupled with the growing pressure of the job, has clearly cut the number of people who are willing to enter the profession.
	That is incredibly sad, because social workers do an extremely important and valuable job, and most do it quite brilliantly. I stand in awe of the contribution that many of them make. It is our duty, in this House this evening, to help to restore the reputation of social workers, not to try to destroy their profession. In this respect, the Ofsted report noted the fact that action has been taken in Reading over the last 18 months to deal with significant staff capability issues and to address shortcomings in supervision and front-line practice. I pray that those actions will bring about a significant improvement.
	However, it is true that the Government's red tape is stopping people doing their jobs, and we heard earlier this evening about the 80 per cent. of time spent on paperwork. No amount of child protection legislation is a substitute for skilled professionals. Social workers need to be allowed to get on with the jobs that they are extremely qualified to do, instead of collecting data and ticking boxes.
	As far as Reading council is concerned, I support the changes that it is implementing and understand that it is trying to make improvements. I hope that the results of the recent Ofsted report will trigger some deep thinking and reflection about past errors and behaviour, but there is no room for complacency or further error in either Reading and Wokingham. Improvements must be deep-seated and long lasting. A real change must take place in the running of children's services both locally and nationally, so that all our constituents get the services that they are entitled to receive.
	Whether they involve baby P in Haringey or Trae-Bleu Layne in Reading, we all have a duty to ensure that such local authority failures are never repeated.

Lynne Featherstone: When the Victoria Climbi tragedy happened in Haringey, the leadership took no fall for that. Only the social worker at the end of the food chain took all the blame and was hung out to dry. That is why Laming so pointedly criticised the lack of accountability in the leadership, why the GovernmentI am grateful to themput in the Children Act 2004 two accountable positions for child protection, and why those people at the top had to go this time. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for acting so resolutely and swiftly to ensure that Laming's views were regarded.
	I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman has done. The concentration has been on the practice, management and focus of children's services, and rightly so, as that is the front line. However, those departments do not exist in isolation. They are subject to pressures. If those pressures and the wider issues are not examined, those departments, however good their work is, will again succumb to those pressures in the years to come and begin to fail. That is why I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman and continue to call for a public inquiry to examine those wider issues.
	Very briefly, I shall give some of my reasons for that opinion. One relates to cost. Although that should not be an issue, I have been told by two sources that an e-mail and a memo are going between senior managers in Haringey instructing senior managers not to take children into care. I have made a freedom of information request to obtain that information, which was denied on cost grounds. I appealed and I am now referring the matter to the Information Commissioner. I have passed that information to Mr. Badman, because it is not inconceivable that cost was an issue in that children's services department.
	We need to look at scrutiny. It is not as though Haringey did not have whistleblowers coming out of its ears, trying to tell it what was going on. I went privately and without any coverage, so that politics and publicity would not come into it, to the leader and the chief executive of Haringey council to tell them about three cases in which there was an endemic problem of a closing of ranks when people tried to raise issues of concern. One of those people was a social worker, one was a parent and one was a school governor.
	Sharon Shoesmith famously said that her department was commendable and did not need scrutiny. Opposition members raised the matter of concern in full council and in other places. We need to consider how we can ensure that those concerns are taken seriously and that politics do not get in the way of issues being dealt with properly.
	Perhaps we need to revisit the merger between children's services and education. I tread on dangerous ground in making that suggestion. I do not know the answer. Why were health visitors not included in that merger? Where there is an education head, social services or children's services feel that they are not covered, and vice versa. There are issues that we need to revisit.
	Secrecy and injunctions are further matters of concern. Haringey has issued many injunctions to stop employees talking about what they know, quite apart from what they might say in private to a serious case review. Injunctions should not be issued like confetti. They act as a protection for the serious issues involved and should not be used to stop people talking about what they know.
	We must also consider the paper trails that are created. We need to look at the Government hoop that Haringey jumped through by presenting false information to Ofsted, which did not see what was under its nose. I shall not enlarge on that, as I want to leave time for my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) to speak. I conclude by asking hon. Members to sign early-day motion 53. There are already 100 signatures. We need to look at the wider issues or the Department will not be able to hold out against the pressures on it, however good the Secretary of State can make social workers.

Edward Timpson: I preface my short contribution to the debate by re-emphasising that the issue requires genuine cross-party co-operation. It is important to recognise that there are many children who have been well protected by our care system, and they are the rule rather than the exception. However, I want to speak in this debate because of my lifelong involvement in child protection, as a result of which I have a deep desire to make sure that we get it right.
	Child protection is about safeguarding children and managing risks. Although the Every Child Matters Green Paper was important and commendable in its motives, sadly it has not led to the wholesale reform of child protection intended by the 2003 Lord Laming report. In my view, it has not been helped by the clear tension between the two statutory duties of local authorities: on the one hand, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need within their areas; and on the other, and as far as is consistent with that duty, to promote the upbringing of such children by their families.
	As a consequence, councils are seeking alternative options for children identified as being at riskfor example, section 20 voluntary accommodation and placements with family friends, as happened in the baby P case. In my experience, that has led to some cases that have gone on far too long before there has been any legal intervention to protect the child. The problem is compounded by two, more recent, introductions. First, there is the hike in issue fees in care cases and, secondly, there is the public law outline in our court system.
	I turn to issue fees. There has been a thirty-twofold increase in court fees charged for care proceedings, imposed by the Government; they have gone from 150 to 4,825 per case. As an immediate consequence, there was a 20 per cent. drop in care applications. Many see that as a significant disincentive against cash-strapped local authorities taking care proceedings. For example, from March 2007 until April 2008, Sunderland spent 32,000 on care proceedings; from March 2008 to December 2008, it spent 116,000 on them. The Government would say that they had provided 40 million to help local authorities finance those hikes in the cost of care applications. However, that additional money was not ring-fenced for that purpose and, as we know, local authorities have a number of other financial constraints. Perhaps the money would be much better spent in other waysthe issue of five care proceedings, for instance, would pay for a family support worker for a whole year. I ask the Minister how it can be right to charge such an extortionate and disproportionate fee to bring proceedings to protect vulnerable children.
	Secondly, there is the issue of the public law outline. I declare an interest, as I had some direct experience of the outline when it was in its infancy in April-May last year. Even at that stage, in the pilot phase, it was obvious that although its aims were laudable, it was an unrealistic model for our current care system, particularly as we are now aware that one in seven social work positions sits vacant. The fact is that local authorities do not currently have the means, resources or expertise to fulfil everything that the public law outline requires them to do. Indeed, the shortages of social workers and the revolving nature of their involvement in a case often mean that the author of the initial social work statement is different from the social worker who carries the case through the courts.
	I am delighted that in my constituency the new local authority-to be, Cheshire East, has recognised the enormous significance of child protection in its range of responsibilities. My message to it and to the Secretary of State is that we must continue to invest in more permanent and highly trained social workers, reduce their casework load, reverse the rise in care application fees and review the public law outline and its impact. Despite the best intentions on all sides, there are still flaws in our care system, and they must be put right.

Ordered,
	That Lindsay Roy to be added to the Scottish Affairs Committee .(Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

James Duddridge: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) on securing this debate on a vital issue. At the best of times, the relationship between government and the electorate is a difficult one; it is a contract whereby the electorate put forward tax in return for the provision of services. As a result of the 2001 census, the people of Southend are being ripped off and I am very concerned about things, despite the preparations for the 2011 census.
	As my hon. Friend mentioned, I was not in Southend and I was not a Member of Parliament during the 2001 census. In fact, I was taking part in a census in Botswana, where I lived at the time. Even in Gaborone, someone knocked on the door and went through the census, as happened during our 2001 census. The questions were slightly differentI was asked how many head of cattle and how many chickens I hadbut the essence of knocking on the door to get that information was in place. It deeply concerns me that the Government and the ONS will be moving away from that approach in 2011. They are moving away from the idea that someone will knock on the door and deliver the form, and that that same person will come back again and again. The Government are setting themselves up for a worse result in 2011even compared with the 2001 base point.
	I congratulate the ONS on running a number of pilots, but I am baffled as to why it has not chosen some of the areas that are said to have lost population in the 2001 census. I am thinking of places such as Westminster, Forest Heath, Kensington and Chelsea, Cambridge, Richmond, Manchester, Oxford, Elmbridge and Barnet. Why were those areas not chosen as test areas in order to sort the problem out? If we get the right figures, will the Minister make better transitional arrangements over the following two years, because to wait a further two years, on top of 10 years of unfair underfunding, would add insult to injury? I shall be writing to you, Mr. Speaker, seeking a wider Westminster Hall debate on the census, inviting colleagues from all of those areas to tease out some of the broader subjects. I have also inquired as to the level of interest in the census across the parties. I believe that an approach was made by the ONS to set up an all-party group on the census, and such a group would be a good way forward.
	If I have read it correctly, the Census Act 1920, as amended in 2000, will involve some form of affirmative resolution, probably later this year, to give permission to go ahead with the 2011 census and to set out some of the detail. Such an arrangement would mean wholly inadequate scrutiny on the part of this Parliament. I shall also seek timeperhaps Government timeon the Floor of the House to consider the census. We talk to our constituents about the demand for policing, schools and the health service, but unless we get the base numbers of the population right in 2011, nothing else will make sense.
	The 1911 census was made available recently and has provoked a lot of interest from those interested in their family history and in social history generally. After spending 450 million and still getting the figures so wrong, the Government should ask whether it is right to use the census figures as a base point for our funding of primary care trusts, policing and education. They are so vague and inaccurate that they are laughable, but they massively affect the lives of our communities. The issue should be considered again after 2011. Perhaps more accurate data could be gathered annually, with lists updated regularlylike primary care trust lists. That would make the relationship between the electorate of Southendand more broadlyand the Government much more equitable.

Kevin Brennan: I congratulate the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) on securing this debate, and I welcome the opportunity to respond, albeit in an arm's length capacity. I cannot do some of the things that the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) might like me to do, as I would not want to interfere too much with the independence of the Office for National Statistics or the UK Statistics Authority. However, I support many of the points that he made about the need to improve the ability to use statistics from other sources in population estimates, and I look forward to his wholehearted support on each occasion when the Government introduce the measures necessary to enable the ONS to do just that.
	I thank the hon. Member for Southend, West for highlighting the importance of the census, both in his contribution tonight and on the other occasions on which he has raised this issue in the House. I am pleased to hear about the work that is already going on in Southend, including what he is doing to highlight the importance of the census to the citizens, and the work that he is doing in conjunction with his local authority.
	The UK Statistics Authority's proposals for the 2011 census in England and Wales were published in a White Paper on 11 December. In planning the design for the census, officials in the ONS have taken account of the recommendations made following the 2001 census by the Treasury Committee, the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office, the former Statistics Commission, other bodies such as the Local Government Association, and Members of Parliament, many of whom had representations to make.
	In the time available, I shall seek to answer as many of the questions that the hon. Member for Southend, West raised as I can. He raised the issue of appeals. There is no appeals process planned for the census, but steps have been taken in the design of the 2011 census to giving the highest priority to getting the national and local population estimates right. The ONS will seek to maximise the overall response rate while reducing the differences in response rates between areas and among particular population sub-groups. Local authorities will be asked to provide data from alternative sources in order to assist the ONS with the quality assurance process. That will provide an opportunity for positive engagement before the population estimates are published.
	The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of houses in multiple occupation. One aim of the local authority liaison programme is to identify those areas where there are likely to be high proportions of HMOs, because they do pose a particular problem in census enumeration. The ONS therefore plans to adopt a traditional approach to those areas, using the enumerator rather than the postal approach to identify addresses where additional forms to cover more than one household may be necessary.
	The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of students, and particular attention will be paid to students in the census. In most areasalthough I accept not in allstudents will be at their term-time address at the time of the census. Others might be living at their home addresses or elsewhere at the time of the census, and students in Southend, as elsewhere, will be counted as resident at their term-time addresses, irrespective of where they are on census day. The census will include a question on term-time addresses for students.
	On the rate support grant, the Government consulted local government in December 2004 about moving towards three-year settlements. The vast majority of responses favoured that approach, as it provides predictability and stability in funding from central Government. The calculation of formula grant that an authority receives will be based on the most up-to-date data available at the beginning of the three-year period. It is not possible to say when the 2011 census data will feed into the calculations, because it will depend on when the data become available and on where we are in the three-year cycle at that point.
	Both hon. Gentlemen raised issues to do with the rehearsal for the census. That will take place on 11 October, covering 135,000 households in areas chosen to simulate census-type conditions. I will write to the hon. Member for Southend, West with details of why those areas have been chosen and with the criteria that were used. The rehearsal will include 61,000 households in Lancaster, or the whole of the local authority, 40,000 in Newham in London, or 40 per cent. of the borough, and the whole of the island of Anglesey, or Ynys Mn as it is known in this House. Although response to the rehearsal is voluntary, the same procedures will be adopted as in the census and the design of the rehearsal will enable valid statistical conclusions to be made on the effectiveness of the operation.
	The hon. Member for Southend, West also asked what support will be in place for local authorities that see their numbers significantly reduced and, as a result, see their grants reduced. A floor damping procedure will be in place to ensure that all local authorities will receive a minimum percentage change in grants to provide stability from the effects of changes from updating data or changing methodology. That will be funded by scaling back the grant increases above the floor for other authorities. The decision on what those floor levels will be will, of course, be taken in due course. A balance will need to be struck between doing what is affordable while allowing some underlying change to come through in the funding of local authorities.
	Some concern was expressed by both hon. Gentlemen about the post and the impact of using the post rather than hand-delivered surveys. In fact, in the 2001 census, even with hand delivery, enumerators failed to make doorstep contact with households at more than a third of the addresses that they visited and had to resort to delivering the form through the letterbox. The use of an established postal service will enable a more focused approach to the follow-up activities in order to improve response rates. The plan is for a post-back response of 60 to 70 per cent. The contract with the chosen postal service will demand the ability to cope with that level of response within the time frame allocated. A purpose-built address list and form-tracking system will enable the ONS to monitor and record the delivery of every form in the field, minimising the risk of forms going astray.
	The hon. Member for Southend, West asked why it will take so long to release the data. The final results will be released in September 2012, which, he is right, is 18 months after 27 March 2011. The proposals for the 2011 census include an increased emphasis on quality assurance of the results during their preparationI am sure that he would welcome that increased quality assuranceand cross-checks against other national and local data sources. The statisticians need enough time to conclude the complex task of processing the census data, to make the necessary adjustments for undercounts, and fully to quality-assure the results before they are released and used. A length of time is involved in doing that very complex work.
	The hon. Member for Southend, West asked about the security of filling in forms online, and about how appropriate that system is. I think that it is appropriate for people to be able to return forms online, and we may find that the response rate to that is high. The ONS is committed to ensuring proper data security and confidentiality. Despite some of the complaints that are raised in this House, the ONS has a very good record on data assurance, but perhaps I can give the hon. Gentleman further details of the plans in place when I write to him following the debate.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about growing family sizes, and was concerned about the large size of the form and the additional forms that would be required in households. In fact, the average household size across the country is smaller than it was in 2001, but the form has been redesigned to accommodate space for an additional resident and up to three visitors in order to reduce the number of requests for additional forms. However, there will be clear instructions on the form and in accompanying publicity material on how to obtain additional forms for larger households.
	A helpline will also be put in place. The hon. Gentleman was concerned that it would be open only from 8 am to 8 pm, but I can assure him that it will be possible for people to call outside those hours, leave a message and ask to be called back. I hope that that is a helpful observation.
	Some concerns have been raised about whether the conduct of the census this time has been designed to make cost savings. In fact, the Government have allocated additional funds to allow for a number of improvements in the 2011 census. Those improvements include more questions, a national address register, an internet collection option, more resources to follow up non-response, and a questionnaire tracking system. Approximately three times the 2001 level of effort will be going into the follow-up operation, which will include helping peoplesuch as the elderlywho have difficulty filling in the forms.
	Time is running short, and the hon. Member for Southend was kind enough to tell me that he was interested in finding the answer to a number of other questions. He has pledged to write to me after the debate, and I shall be happy to write back to him with detailed responses to his questions.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.